Surface Improvement of Die Steel Materials by Powder Mixed Electrical Discharge Machining For Tribological Application

Abstract

This research work has investigated the effect of EDM process parameters such as gap current, pulse on time, pulse off time, electrode material and powder material on surface properties namely, micro-hardness, surface roughness, thickness of layer deposited, uniformity of layer deposited and coefficient of friction. Experimentation was carried out on three die steels, namely oil hardened non shrinking die steel material (OHNS), high carbon high chromium die steel material (D2) and high speed die steel material (H13).Three electrode materials namely copper (Cu), graphite (Gr) and copper tungsten (CuW) and three powders i.e., chromium (Cr), tungsten (W) and silicon carbide (SiC) were used in the research work. Experiments were conducted in two phases, the pilot experiments and main experiments.