The influence of Span-20 surfactant and micro-/nano-Chromium (Cr) Powder Mixed Electrical Discharge Machining (PMEDM) on the surface characteristics of AISI D2 hardened steel

The application of powder mixed dielectric to improve the efficiency of electrical discharge machining (EDM) has been extensively studied. Therefore, PMEDM have attracted the attention of many researchers since last few decades. Improvement in EDM process has resulted in the use of span-20 surfactant and Cr powder mixed in dielectric fluid, which results in increasing machiniability, better surface quality and faster machining time. However, the study of powder suspension size of surface charateristics in EDM field is still limited. This paper presents the improvement of micro-/nano- Cr powder size on the surface characteristics of the AISI D2 hardened steels in PMEDM. It has found that the reacst layer in PMEDM improved by as high as 41-53 % compared to conventional EDM. Also notably, the combination of added Cr powder and span-20 surfactant reduced the recast layer thickness significantly especially in nano-Cr size. This improvement was great potential adding nano-size Cr powder to dielectric for machining performance.