PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to produce electric discharge machining (EDM) electrodes by using stereolithography (SLA) rapid prototyping technique and investigate the machining performance of these electrodes. In the experimental part of the study, the performance of solid copper and copper‐coated SLA (cc/SLA) electrodes are observed and compared.Design/methodology/approachThe performance outputs such as material removal rate, machining depth, workpiece surface roughness and electrode front surface wear are used as metrics of comparison. The temperature measurements taken from the face of both solid copper and cc/SLA electrodes indicated that the heat build up during machining significantly accelerated the failure of cc/SLA electrodes.FindingsThe paper finds that circulating the cooling liquid inside the internal cooling channels formed with SLA technique, elongated the life of cc/SLA electrodes by dissipating the heat from the coating.Originality/valueThe Fluent Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Software is used to numerically analyze various aspects of cooling of cc/SLA electrodes. The key findings of the study are presented in this paper.

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