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Performance and increased fatigue life for a Ti workpiece produced by the EDM process

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Abstract

The effect of the discharge current (ranging from 5 to 13 A) in electrical discharge machining (EDM) on the machining characteristics of pure Ti is investigated. With an increased discharge current, the electrode wear rates (ranging from 0.15 to 0.73 mg/min), material removal rates (ranging from 1.37 to 5.30 mg/min), surface roughness (ranging from Ra = 3.47 to Ra = 5.91 μm), and recast layer thickness (ranging from 19.12 to 48.52 μm) also increased. However, the EDMed surface micro-hardness decreased from 269 Hv (discharge current 5 A) to 216 Hv (discharge current 13 A), which is due to the electrical discharge coating effect. Control charts are used to ensure the EDM process is well regulated and stable. The EDMed surface is modified by plasma etching and the surface defects are gradually removed, so the fatigue life increases from 66 to 80 times, an improvement of 21.2%. The sample by plasma etching and then TiAlN hard coating has better surface quality and a significantly greater fatigue life.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge Albert Wen-Jeng Hsue (Department of Mold and Die Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Taiwan) who provided the idea of the revised manuscript.

Funding

This work was partially supported by the 2022 Innovation Team Project of Colleges and Universities of Guangdong Province (Serial number: 537, Project Name: Intelligent equipment innovation team based on machine vision), 2020 Innovation Team Project of Colleges and Universities of Guangdong Province (Project No.: 2020KCXTD066), 2020 Dongguan Science and Technology Commissioner project (Project No.: 20201800500242), and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China, through Grant nos. MOST 110-2622-E-262-001 and MOST 111-2221-E-262-005-.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Dongguan Polytechnic, Dongguan, 523808, China

    Zhi-Wei Liu

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lunghwa University of Science and Technology, Taoyuan, 33306, Taiwan

    Chung-Wei Hsu, Shang-Hua Wu, Jia-Sheng Zhou, Jin-Yih Kao & Chun-Yao Hsu

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Contributions

Zhi-wei Liu: conceptualization; Zhi-wei Liu, Chung-Wei Hsu, Chung-Wei Hsu, Shang-Hua Wu: experimentation; Chung-Wei Hsu, Shang-Hua Wu, Jia-Sheng Zhou: characterization; Jin-Yih Kao, Chun-Yao Hsu: validation; Zhi-wei Liu, Jin-Yih Kao: analysis; Chun-Yao Hsu: writing—original draft.

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Correspondence to Jin-Yih Kao or Chun-Yao Hsu.

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Liu, ZW., Hsu, CW., Wu, SH. et al. Performance and increased fatigue life for a Ti workpiece produced by the EDM process. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 122, 1629–1639 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-09999-z

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