Fabrication of Tapered Micro Pillars on Titanium Using Electric Discharge Micromachining

Materials are made harder, tougher, heat resistant and more corrosion resistant which make them difficult-to-machine by traditional machining methods. Titanium and its alloys are in the group of these difficult-to-machine materials, and these alloys have applications in aerospace, power generation, surgical instruments, automobile, chemical plants etc. Ti-6Al-4V is amongst the commonly used titanium alloy, and the current research is focused on its efficient machining. Electro discharge micromachining can be used for producing features in micro range on electrically conductive materials. Straight micro electrodes have been produced using EDMM process. The main objective of the current research is to achieve array of tapered micro pillars on Ti-6Al-4V Work piece material using EDMM process. The effect of process parameters such as gap voltage, discharge current, pulse on-time and duty cycle on the response parameters such as taper angle, material removal rate (MRR) and tool wear rate (TWR) are studied. The experiments are designed using statistical technique. After studying the results of the experiments, the array of micro tapered pillars of different taper angles is produced to see the feasibility of fabrication of tapered pillars on titanium alloy using EDMM process.