Analysis of roughness profiles of steel surfaces after electroerosion machining

Electroerosion machining is one of the most common and effective methods for manufacturing difficult-to-machine parts. The dependence of the surface characteristics of heat-resistant steel samples on the parameters of electroerosion processing has been studied. Using an electroerosion machine, samples were processed in various modes according to a full-factorial experimental design, allowing all possible combinations of processing parameters to be implemented. To assess the condition of the machined surface of all samples, surface roughness was measured in the longitudinal and transverse processing directions. The results of an analysis of the obtained surface roughness profiles are presented. The previously drawn conclusion that the average height of irregularities increases with increasing pulse current has been confirmed. Moreover, it has been established that the fractal dimension of the profile changes in the scale range of 20-500 microns, calculated using the "area-scale" function. A spectral analysis of microroughness was performed based on the accumulated spectral power of the surface roughness profile of steel samples, which revealed that the spatial frequencies of no more than 0.05 mu m-1 primarily contributes to microroughness formation. The obtained results enabled to obtain surfaces with the necessary optical and adhesive properties by selecting parameters for processing samples on electroerosion equipment.