Investigation on the effects of ultrasonic vibration on material removal rate and surface roughness in wire electrical discharge turning

An investigation has been made to combine ultrasonic vibration and wire electrical discharge turning. Design of a submerged, precise, flexible, and corrosion-resistant rotary spindle is introduced. The spindle was mounted on a five-axis wire electrical discharge machine to rotate the workpiece in order to generate free-form cylindrical geometries. An auxiliary device that produces ultrasonic vibration was installed between the two wire guides. The ultrasonic system consists of an ultrasonic generator, a transducer, and a wire holder. When the wire is being driven, the transducer together with the wire holder vibrates under the resonance condition. Material removal rate (MRR) indicates efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the process. Experimental results show that wire vibration induced by ultrasonic action has a significant effect on material removal rate. This study has been conducted to evaluate the influence of four design factors: power, pulse off time, spindle rotational speed, and ultrasonic vibration over material removal rate. This has been done by means of design of experiments technique. Analysis of variance was used to determine significant effective factors and also to obtain an equation based on data regression. Experimental results indicate that ultrasonic vibration and power are the most significant influencing parameters on MRR. Rotational speed and pulse off time are the next in ranking. In order to study surface roughness, Ra is measured in different machining parameters.