Influence of Process Parameters on Characteristics of Electrical Discharge Machining of PH17-4 Stainless Steel

In the present work, an investigation has been made into the electrical discharge machining process during machining of precipitation hardening stainless steel PH17-4. Taguchi method is used to formulate the experimental layout, to analyze the effect of each process parameter on machining characteristics and to predict the optimal choice for each electrical discharge machining process parameters namely, peak current, pulse on time and pulse off time that give up optimal process performance characteristics such as material removal rate, surface roughness, tool wear rate and surface hardness. To identify the significance of parameters on measured response, the analysis of variance has been done. It is found that parameters peak current and pulse on time have the significant affect on material removal rate, surface roughness, tool wear rate and surface hardness. However, parameter pulse off time has significant affect on material removal rate. Confirmation tests are conducted at their respective optimum parametric settings to verify the predicted optimal values of performance characteristics.