Experimental Investigation of Magnetic Field Assisted Electro Discharge Deposition Process

A new deposition technique for the fabrication of micro parts by electrical discharge machine (EDM) was investigated. Electro discharge deposition (EDDe) is an emerging process in the area of manufacturing parts in micro scale. The dissipated energy at the anode is used voluntarily to melt the wire which gets deposited on the desired surface. Researches on EDDe process investigated mainly on the effect of main operating parameters such as current, pulse on time, voltage, on the quality of deposited material. The control of melted and vaporized material would assist in limiting the plasma channel which would significantly affect the stability of deposition process. Thus, the deposition process performance would be improved by controlling the deposition particles within interelectrode gap. In this investigation, magnetic field was added to conventional electrical discharge machine to form magnetic field assisted EDDe. Experimental study using CCRD method is conducted to understand the effect of varying process parameters which includes current, voltage, pulse on time, duty cycle and field strength on deposited layer characteristics. Experimental results suggest that the magnetic field facilitates the deposition process significantly.