Investigation on the Wire Electric Discharge Machining Performance of artificially aged Al6061/B4C composites by Response Surface Method

Abstract

Present research work is focused on investigation of material removal rate in Wire-ED Machining (EDM) of artificially aged Al-6061/ B4C reinforced composites with 2-6 wt.% in peak aged condition. Combined effect of B4C and artificial aging at 100°C improved the hardness by 20 - 170% under as cast and artificially aged condition. Initially the wire EDM experiments are conducted on Al6061 alloy and then the process parameters such as current, pulse-on time (ton) and pulse-off time (toff) are optimized to obtain the high material removal rate (MRR). At optimized conditions test samples with various % of B4C are machined to study their influence on MRR. The study revealed that current and toff had a significant influence. MRR increased as current is increased and it decreased as toff is increased. Maximum MRR at optimum settings, current: 5.53 A, Toff : 10 µs and Ton : 36.46 µs is 2.45 mg/min. Considering the limitation of the experimental set up the modified optimum settings (Toff : 10 µs, Ton : 30 µs and current: 5 A) resulted in average MRR of 2.39 mg/min with deviation of 0.20 mg/min. The study showed that there is no significant difference in MRR and the morphology of the machined surface with respect to test samples of different % of B4C particles as reinforcement in Al6061 composite.