Effect of wire electrical discharge machining parameters on surface roughness and volumetric material removal rate of tool steels

In this work the effect of wire electrical discharge machining parameters such as current, pulse offtime, open circuit voltage and gap voltage on the surface roughness and volumetric material removal rate of a 2601 cold worked tool steel was studied using a modified Taguchi orthogonal array (L-16M). After the design, the experiments were performed employing a five axis wire electrodischarge machine, and the average feed rate was measured during the work. Values of the surface roughness were measured by means of a portable device. Using the results of experiments and analysis of variance (ANOVA), importance and effectiveness of each parameter was discerned. By means of analysis of signal to noise ratio, optimised combination of the machining parameters was determined.