Experimental study of surface roughness in Electric Discharge Machining (EDM) based on Grey Relational Analysis

Abstract

Electric Discharge Machining (EDM) is one of the modern machining which is capable in handling hard and difficult-to-machine material. The successful of EDM basically depends on its performances such as surface roughness (Ra), material removal rate (MRR), electrode wear rate (EWR) and dimensional accuracy (DA). Ra is considered as the most important performance due to it role as a technological quality measurement for a product and also a factor that significantly affects the manufacturing process. This paper presents the experimental study of surface roughness in die sinking EDM using stainless steel SS316L with copper impregnated graphite electrode. The machining experimental is conducted based on the two levels full factorial design of design of experiment (DOE) with five machining parameters which are peak current, servo voltage, servo speed, pulse on time and pulse off time. The results were analyzed using grey relational analysis (GRA) and it was found that pulse on time and servo voltage give the most influence to the Ra value.