Experimental Investigation of EDM Machining Parameters to Machine EN8 Material by using Heat Treated Tool

It is observed that in recent trend EN8 material has tremendous application in aeronautical, aerospace industry and automobile engineering because of its favorable properties. Therefore EN8 material has been chosen to machine by EDM. But EDM has a disadvantage of lower MRR. So an experimental investigation has been carried out to study machining parameters of EDM to improve MRR and reducing TWR. Here heat treatment process has been studied and applied to improve tool life by reducing tool wear rate. In this experiment Copper tool has modified by changing its grain growth structure by step hardening process and results in both heat treated and without heat treated tools are compared. The objective of EDM is to get high MRR along with achieving reasonably good surface quality of machined component with reduced tool wear rate for EN8 material. Taguchi design has been implemented to investigate the effect of pulse current, Pulse on Time and Flushing pressure on the responses MRR, TWR and SR. It is being found that tool wear rate of heat treated Cu tool is less than that without heat treated Cu tool and surface roughness of work piece material i.e EN8 is better when heat treated tool is used.