Thermal modeling of the material removal rate and surface roughness for die-sinking EDM

The die-sinking electrical discharge machining (EDM) process is characterized by slow processing speeds. Research effort has been focused on optimizing the process parameters so as for the productivity of the process to be increased. In this paper a simple, thermal based model has been developed for the determination of the material removal rate and the average surface roughness achieved as a function of the process parameters. The model predicts that the increase of the discharge current, the arc voltage or the spark duration results in higher material removal rates and coarser workpiece surfaces. On the other hand the decrease of the idling time increases the material removal rate with the additional advantage of achieving slightly better surface roughness values. The model’s predictions are compared with experimental results for verifying the approach and present good agreement with them.