Performance of Zinc Coated Electrode Wire and Parametric Optimization During Profile Cutting of Die-Steel

Abstract

In this work, the effect of brass wire coated with zinc as electrode wire towards maximizing MRR and minimizing SR for the considered input parameters was studied in elaborate during profile cutting of tool steel AISI D3. Experiments were designed based on the L18(21,37) Taguchi’s orthogonal array considering cutting speed, Ton and Toff, wire tension, servo feed rate and voltage, current and electrode feed rate. The outputs MRR and SR were analyzed and optimized using Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) simultaneously. For both SR and MRR, the drawn chart shows that, the raw data’s lies within upper and lower control limits. The optimum input conditions obtained for higher MRR and lower SR were: 75% of cutting speed, 128 μsec of Ton, 54μsec of Toff, 190A of input current, electrode feed of 3 mm/min with 7 gm of electrode tension, 10V of servo voltage and 2060 mm/min of 10V. Execution of ANOVA on grey grade identifies that, wire tension was the parameter that influences more by 25.89%, followed by Ton and servo voltage by 21.37% and feed rate of wire by 11.89%, with an R2 value of 96.55%. For validating the results, confirmation experiment was also done.