Analysis of Wire Wear in WEDM

Objective: This paper emphasizes the effect of cutting parameter on the size of crater and wire wear ratio because wire breakage is most common problem in WEDM and wire crater is very much responsible for wire breakage. Methods/statistical Analysis: Many researchers had adopted various methods for the evaluation of the dominating parameters on wire EDM process. In this study Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used as a statistical analytical tool for the evaluation of the parametric effect on wire creator of wire EDM process. OLYAMPUS BX51M optical microscope was used for the observation of wire creator. For experiment MAXICUT WEDM machine was used and experiment were conducted on INCONEL 625 work piece and zinc coated brass wire of 0.25mm diameter was used. Finding: The experiments were conducted under different cutting parameters, which are open circuit voltage, pulse duration, wire speed and flushing pressure. As a result it was found that crater size increases with increase in pulse duration because increased pulse duration contributes to large energy content of spark discharge further it was also found that the creator size also increases with open circuit voltage and feed wire speed whereas decrease with increase in flushing pressure. Applications/Improvements: This analysis can become the basis for industries where the manufacturing is done by the wire EDM process and wire breakage is the common problem.