Experimental investigation on carbon steel micro-rod machining by LS-WEDT

ABSTRACT

This article proposed for the first time the method of the low-speed wire electrical discharge turning (LS-WEDT) combined with the multiple cutting strategy to fabricate carbon steel micro-rods. First, the rotating apparatus submerged in working fluid is designed and manufactured to enable the low-speed wire electrical discharge machine to generate cylindrical geometries. Besides, material removal rate, surface roughness, and machining precision of the micro-rod manufactured by the LS-WEDT are, respectively, investigated. Moreover, the surface microstructure and surface chemical reaction of micro-rods are characterized using scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive spectroscopy analysis. Experimental results display that the micro-rod of 70 µm diameter and 1000 µm length can be successfully fabricated. More importantly, the mean absolute diameter deviation of the micro-rod fabricated by LS-WEDT is 0.65 µm and the surface roughness is 0.53 µm, which identified the high machining precision and good surface quality of the micro-rod.

KEYWORDS:

• Efficiency
• fabrication
• LS-WEDT
• micro-rod
• microstructure
• precision
• roughness