An Experimental Study to Achieve Minimum Surface Roughness While Machining P20 Tool Steel Using Wire EDM

There is a rapid increase in the usage of hard materials. The conventional machining process has been left behind by complex and intricate part machining. Such complex machining of hard materials via conventional machining methods does often lead to poor quality characteristics such as low surface roughness. Thus, to achieve the goal of better quality characteristics while machining hard materials, non-conventional machining processes come into play. Wire Electric Discharge Machining (Wire-EDM), is an example of such non-conventional machining processes. This paper highlights a research analysis on parametric optimization of Wire EDM process while machining P20 tool steel. It deals with the optimization of parameters namely Pulse on time, Pulse off time, Peak current and Wire Tension so as to obtain low surface roughness. Taguchi’s design of experiments and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) has been used for the optimization purpose and L9 orthogonal array has been used for the same. Furthermore, it was found that Pulse off time and Peak Current were the most significant factors, followed by Pulse on time and Wire Tension.