Analysis and Optimization of Process Parameters in EDM of RENE 80 Using Taguchi Method

Abstract

-The present work aims to carry out an experimental investigation into the electrical discharge machining process while machining of Nickel super alloy RENE80. Taguchi L9 orthogonal array is used to plan the experimental layout. Taguchi method is used to analyze the effect of each process parameter such as peak current, pulse on time and pulse off time on chosen machining characteristics namely material removal rate (MRR) and surface roughness (SR) and also to predict the optimal combination of process parameters to get maximum material removal rate and minimum surface roughness separately. Further analysis of variance has been done to identify the significant affect of parameters on machining characteristics. It is found that parameters peak current and pulse on time have a significant affect where as pulse off time has no significant affect on material removal rate and surface roughness. Confirmation experiments are conducted at their respective optimum parametric settings to check the predicted optimal values of performance characteristics. Then percentage errors are calculated and are 0.94 and 4.87 respectively in predicting MRR and SR values. Keywords--Electrical Discharge Machining, Taguchi Method, Peak Current, Pulse on Time, Pulse off Time, Material Removal Rate, Surface Roughness.