The effect of current intensity and feed rate on surface roughness and fatigue life of work piece in wire electrical discharge turning (WEDT) process

Wire electrical discharge turning (WEDT) is one of the relatively new areas of research in machining. The main reason for using WEDT is the lack of contact between the tool and the workpiece during the cutting process, which makes the workpiece hardness and brittleness not a limiting factor for cutting. For WEDT it is necessary to add a rotating mechanism to the wire cut device to rotate the workpiece while holding it. In this paper, the effect of current intensity and feed rate on surface roughness and fatigue life of workpiece Mo40 is investigated using design of experiments with response surface method and the effect of each input parameters is determined using analysis of variance. According to the results of the experimental experiments, with increasing table feed and current intensity, surface finish and fatigue life of the workpiece decrease. Feed rate with 87 and 75% effect on surface roughness and fatigue life, respectively, is the determining parameter. The lowest surface roughness (1.63 µm) and the highest fatigue life (85613 rev) were obtained using values of 1 ampere for current and 0.4 mm/min for feed rate in the WEDT process, but in other experiments of the WEDT process, the surface roughness is higher and the fatigue life is less than that of the conventional turning. The average surface roughness in the WEDT process is 52% higher than that of conventional turning, and the average fatigue life of the workpiece in the WEDT process is 16.8% lower than that of conventional tuning.