In-house development of µ-ECM setup and its experimental validation

ABSTRACT

In today’s advanced and competitive environment in the smart manufacturing, the need to develop micro/nano-scaled components made up of typical engineering materials with superior quality has been observed as an issue of paramount importance. For responding to these challenges, well-capable in-house development of microelectrochemical machining (µ-ECM) setup has been targeted in this work. This includes the design of a tool feeding system, wire-circuit-diagram of linear axial movement of tool electrode, power supply system, and electrolyte circulation system. µ-ECM is an advanced machining process that is capable to fabricate micro-cavities, micro-holes, and micro-channels on hard-to-cut materials. The trial experiments were performed at different parametric settings of input variables such as applied voltage, electrolyte concentration, and tool feed-rate; and their effects have been observed over the process measures, i.e., material removal rate and dimensional-accuracy. Furthermore, the validation of developed µ-ECM setup has been done by comparing the performance of the process measures with the previous research works. The results of trials have been found to be in-accordance with the past investigations, which further validate the appropriate development of the designed setup. In-context with the radial-overcut, the µ-ECM inputs duty-cycle and concentration of electrolyte have been observed to be most dominating.

KEYWORDS:

• µ-ECM
• MRR
• radial overcut
• In-house development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).