Empirical Investigations on Inconel 601 using Wire Electric Discharge Machine

Conventional and non-conventional methods can be employed to provide the shape to hard, tough and difficult to cut materials but the non-conventional processes are most suitable for machining hard materials and intricate profiles with better precision and accuracy. The conventional processes are many a times unable to generate complex profiles in hard materials whereas non-conventional processes are highly significant to complete the work as these processes give perfect shape and proper dimension to the work material. In non-conventional processes, Electric Discharge machining is widely acceptable for hard, intricate and complex contours. Although there are hybrid Electric Discharge Machining and other advancements are existing in Electric Discharge Machining but Wire electrical discharge machining is widely used for machining the variety of work materials such as alloys and superalloys. Inconel 601 is a nickel based super alloy which offers good resistance to aqueous corrosion and has excellent mechanical strength. Therefore, it is widely used in aerospace, heat treating and power generation industry. It has been found that conventional methods are not suitable for machining such type of superalloy, therefore, it becomes imperative to use alternative methods such as non-conventional methods to machine such superalloys. In a present work, experimental investigations on Inconel 601 using wire electrical discharge machine to model surface roughness and cutting rate employing response surface methodology have been carried out. The input process parameters considered in the study are wire-tension, pulse on time, servo voltage, and peak-current. In this design of experiment, these four input process parameters are kept at five levels while other five parameters have constant values. The performance characteristics are cutting speed and surface roughness. These are the two main performance variables to evaluate the machining effects. It has been found that cutting-rate increases with the increase in pulse-on time and peak-current whereas the surface roughness increases with the increase of pulse-on time. The cutting-rate decreases with the increase in servo voltage but increases with decrease in servo voltage. Most significant parameters are pulse-on time, peak-current and servo-voltage. Wire tension has the little effect on machining parameters.