The potential of water-in-oil emulsion of canola oil as dielectric fluid for EDM process

Abstract

Currently, the industry generally uses electrical discharge machining (EDM) with kerosene facing problems in terms of processing efficiency, perilous environment, and low quality of the machined surface. In this paper, water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion dielectric is introduced as an alternative for this drawback. Kerosene has low properties especially thermal conductivity, viscosity and, higher heat capacity. Vegetable oil such as canola oil can be selected as an alternative dielectric fluid. This work has measured the properties of canola oil including thermal conductivity, heat capacity and viscosity for possible use as a dielectric fluid. The result shows that the emulsion of canola oil has the best combination at 35wt% of Tween20 with heat applied.