The paper presents experimental estimates of erosion rates of few work/tool pairs of similar and dissimilar materials, during Electric Discharge Machining (EDM) process. Experimental erosion rates of cathode are evaluated against the pointed heat source model (PHSM), proposed by Dibitonto et al. [3], specifically for cathode erosion. Materials considered are steel, copper, titanium and graphite. This paper proposes that the PHSM can be used to estimate the erosion rate for the cathode material provided it is assumed that the fraction of energy going to the cathode is a function of energy input per pulse. It is concluded that the distribution of energy per pulse to the electrodes, dielectric and plasma, and hence their erosion rates, depend significantly on the electrode material pair and their polarity.
| Number of Pages : | 6 |
| Published : | 11/01/2000 |
