Study of surface roughness in wire electrochemical micro machining

Wire electrochemical micro machining (WEMM) has many advantages in machining metal structures. Even though surface roughness is one of the important indicators for measuring processing quality, it has not been paid enough attention to when using WEMM. In this paper, cathode travelling and anode vibration were used to enhance mass transport and to improve the machining surface roughness, because electrolytic products accumulate easily in the machining gap, which causes a rough surface. Moreover, changes in the surface roughness under cathode travelling, anode vibration and pulse conditions were experimentally investigated, and surfaces with Ra = 0.058 μm and Rmax = 0.670 μm were obtained. Micro cams with smooth faces were fabricated using optimal machining conditions.