Improving productivity with eco-friendly dielectrics in sustainable EDM machining of AISI 2507 super duplex stainless steel

Electric discharge machining (EDM) is renowned for machining intricate geometries of hard materials. The dielectric fluid is reflected to be the key indicator of sustainability. Conventional hydrocarbon dielectrics are considered to be toxic and emitting harmful aerosol emissions leading to environmental pollution. The bio-based dielectric has comparable features to conventional dielectric and thus can be replaced. The present analysis is projecting the new green dielectric fluids, named pongamia green dielectric (GD1) and neem green dielectric (GD2) for sustainable EDM of 2507 super duplex stainless steel. Material removal rate (MRR), electrode wear rate (EWR) and surface roughness (SR) are measured by varying pulse-on time (Ton), pulse-off time (Toff), peak current (Ip), voltage (v) and inter-electrode gap (IEG) in Taguchi's L27 experiments. GD1 and GD2 have outperformed conventional dielectric by 18.45% and 42.08% in terms of MRR, 5.9%, and 7.5% in terms of SR.