Performance Enhancement of EDM Process using Electroplated Zinc–Nickel Coated Brass Electrodes

Abstract

Electric discharge machining (EDM) is a prominent machining process for machining hard to cut materials. This process is mainly used for fabrication of cooling holes, lubricating oil holes, and press tools and dies. In EDM process tool wear is inevitable and research on reduction of tool wear and increasing the accuracy gains an importance in manufacturing industries. This research, focus on coating of brass electrode with zinc and nickel through electrochemical method. The coated electrode is subjected in EDM performance analysis such as machining speed (MS), tool wear rate (TWR) and surface roughness (R_a). Artificial neural networks (ANN) with desirability function analysis (DFA) is used to analysis the EDM performance. The successful set of parameters determined were a gap voltage of 25 V, a current of 10.73 A, a pulse-on duration of 60 µs, and a pulse-off time of 10 µs. The application of the zinc- and nickel-coated electrodes attributed for the reduced TWR. The inclusion of ANN–DFA gives in accurate forecasts of the largely encouraging machining setting, providing a flexible structure for prospect EDM procedures.