Experimental Study of Electrical Discharge Machine (die sinking) on Stainless Steel 316L Using Design of Experiment

The objective of this study is to investigate the influence of Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) input parameters on characteristics of EDM process. A combination between two advanced materials which stainless steel 316l as workpiece and copper impregnated graphite as electrode have been selected in this study. The copper impregnated graphite is considered as a hybrid material for the electrode which exponentially used in tool and mould making industry. The study was conducted using 2 levels of full factorial method in design of experiments. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and mathematically modelling were developed for material removal rate (MRR), electrode wear rate (EWR), surface roughness (SR) and dimensional accuracy (DA). The first order model is required to fit dimensional accuracy linear model. However, second order model are required to fit MRR, EWR and SR quadratic models respectively. The result shows that the peak current was the most significant factors to all variable responses. Based on confirmation run, all the results are less than 15% error, thus, indicating the model that were developed for MRR, SR, EWR and Dimensional Accuracy are reasonable accurate.