Robust setting of Ti-6Al-4V machining using WEDM (High Energy with EF Circuit ON)

Abstract

In this project, four Wire EDM parameters (On Time, Off Time, Peak Current and Wire Speed) were manipulated to achieve the robust setting on material removal rate (MRR) and surface roughness (Ra) using Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy material. To study the effect of those factors on the MRR and Ra, Design of Experiment (DOE) tool was used. Classical Method was utilized as DOE tool to study the influence of this design factors on MRR and Ra because Classical Method can study the interaction between factors, which can help to give much deeper understanding on the characteristic of the response based on the level of the design factors. From the experimental data that had been analysis by DOE, the MRR manage to generate only robust setting because there was no significant interaction between factors. Meanwhile, the data analysis for Ra managed to generate two types of setting, which are optimize and robust setting. After that, confirmation experiments were done to validate. From the percentage error calculated based on the predicted data and actual confirmation data, optimize setting produce a larger percentage of error compare to robust setting. These maybes due to the fact that robust settings produce more stable response compare to optimize setting. Although the experiments result cannot be validated due to percentage error more than 10%, the source of error was identified, which is manual setting of high and low pressure for flushing system. But still, the information gathered from the experiments is useful for further studies on Ti-6Al-4V machining using Wire EDM.