Effect of sensing mechanism on machining performance of ECDM process

Electro Chemical Discharge Machining (ECDM) has been introduced as an un-conventional hybrid process in last few decades for machining of materials which are electrically non-conducting as well as conducting. In the current work, an effort is carried out to modify the microfeatures produced in ECDM machining with a sensor mechanism. An ECDM setup is fabricated with a sensor mechanism in order to reduce the irregularities in the micromachining process. The microholes machined with a sensor mechanism has shown improvement in terms of circularity. A multiobjective optimisation is carried out with Grey Fuzzy Reasoning Analysis (GFRA) in order to obtain maximum Material Removal Rate (MRR) with minimum Radial Over Cut (ROC). The experimental study has shown that ROC has been reduced to greater extend with improvement in material removal through optimisation of process parameters using GFRA. From the GFRA analysis, at an optimised parameters combination, a higher MRR of 0.075 mg/min with minimum ROC 0.01 mm is obtained for borosilicate glass workpiece.