Experimental research on electrochemical machining of titanium alloy Ti60 for a blisk

Ti60 (Ti–5.6Al–4.8Sn–2Zr–1Mo–0.35Si–0.7Nd) is a high-temperature titanium alloy that is now used for important components of aircraft engines. Electrochemical machining (ECM) is a promising technique that has several advantages, such as a high machining rate, and can be used on a wide range of difficult-to-process materials. In this paper, orthogonal experiments are conducted to investigate ECM of Ti60, with the aim of determining the influences of some electrochemical process parameters on the surface roughness. The most important parameter is found to be the frequency of the pulsed power supply. It is found that using suitably optimized parameters for ECM can greatly decrease the surface roughness of a workpiece. A surface roughness of approximately 0.912 μm can be obtained with the following optimal parameters: NaCl electrolyte concentration 13wt%, voltage 20 V, pulse frequency 0.4 kHz, duty cycle 0.3, temperature 23 °C, and anode feed rate 0.5 mm/min. Furthermore, blisk blades have been successfully processed using these optimized parameters.