Investigation of Surface integrity of AISI D3 tool steel After EDM

AISI D3 tool steel is a high-carbon, high- chromium, oil-hardening tool steel that is characterized by a relatively high attainable hardness and numerous, large, chromium-rich alloy carbides in the microstructure. These carbides provide good resistance to wear from sliding contact with other metals and abrasive materials. Typical applications for D3 tool steel include Blanking, stamping, and cold forming dies and punches for long runs; lamination dies, Bending, forming, and seaming rolls, Cold trimmer dies or rolls, Burnishing dies or rolls, Plug gauges, Drawing dies for bars or wire. In this paper the microstructure of D3 tool steel is observed before and after heat treatment and surface roughness in D3 is investigated after EDM. For this set of experiments three different tool electrodes are taken and the result shows the variation of Ra value with respect to discharge current.