Experimental Investigation of Different Electrolytes on Stainless Steel 316 Using Electrochemical Micromachining

Electrochemical Micro-machining process is one of the popular non traditional machining processes which is used to machine materials such as super alloys, Ti-alloys, stainless steel etc. This project involves Faraday?s Law of Electrolysis. The aim of the present work is to optimize the ECM process parameters with the combination of SS316 (job material) and Copper electrode (tool material). This project mainly focuses on the experimental investigation of electrochemical micro-machining (ECM) process on stainless steel SS316 by different electrodes on various parameters. Taguchi design of experiment has been used to carry out the design of input process parameters and their levels. Moreover, microscopic characteristic study machined is to determine the surface topography of the electrochemical micro-work piece surface. The experimental results attained the effect of electrolyte concentration and duty cycle which is the most significant factors for the machining of stainless steel SS316 by electrochemical micro-machining (ECM) process. The results of 16 experiments revealed that increases in electrolyte concentration decrease the MRR and surface roughness initially increases then decreases. Further, increase in current increases MRR initially and then decreases, surface roughness also increases. It is also noticed that increase in feed rate MRR decreases and then increases, also surface roughness decreases then increases.