Experimental Study of Material Removal Rate in Electrical Discharge Turning of Titanium Alloy (Ti-6al-4v)

Electrical discharge turning (EDT) is a new machining process in which an external axis is added to a conventional EDM machine in order to produce precise cylindrical forms on hard and difficult to machine materials. By feeding a pre shaped tool electrode against a rotating work piece, axially symmetrical pats can be produce. The machining performance of EDT process is influenced by its machining parameters, which directly affect the quality of the machined component. This paper presents an experimental study on the effects of EDM parameters namely pulse-on time, peak current, gap voltage, spindle speed and flushing pressure on material removal rate (MRR) in electrical discharge turning of titanium alloy Ti6-Al-4V. This has been done by means of the Taguchi's design of experiment technique. A mathematical model has been developed for MRR by regression analysis and factor effects were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). Signal-to-noise ratio analysis is used to find the optimal condition.