A STUDY ON MICRO HARDNESS IN WIRE ELECTRICAL DISCHARGE MACHINING BASED ON TAGUCHI METHOD

Wire electric discharge machining (WEDM) is a widely accepted non-traditional material removal process for manufacturing of components with intricate shapes. In the present work, an investigation into the wire electric discharge machining of high strength and low alloy (HSLA) steels has been carried out. HSLA steels provide better mechanical properties and greater resistance to atmospheric corrosion. Experimentation has been done using Taguchi's L9 orthogonal array. Each experiment was conducted under different combinations of pulse on time, pulse off time and peak current. The optimum machining parameter combination was obtained by using the analysis of signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio, analysis of means and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Further, the level of importance of the machining parameters on micro-hardness was determined by using ANOVA. The study shows that the Taguchi's method is suitable to solve the stated problem with minimum number of trails.