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Ti-6Al-4V (grade 5 titanium alloy) is one of the most widely used materials in aerospace applications including turbine blades for aerospace engines. Due to the difficulty of machining titanium alloys using conventional machining processes, wire-electro-discharge machining (wire-EDM) is used extensively for cutting titanium parts with complex geometries and profiles. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of two important non-electrical parameters in wire-EDM, i.e. wire feed rate and wire tension, on the geometric corner and profile accuracies of the Ti-6Al-4V parts machined by wire EDM. A complex profile was designed for machining in two different thicknesses of titanium alloy using each set of experimental parameters. The complex part includes corners with 45°, 90° and 112.5°, as well as thin wall section for measuring the kerf accuracy. It was found that with the increase of wire tension, the corner accuracies at almost all the angles improved. however, too high wire tension caused inaccuracies by providing larger angles than the target values. The effect of wire tension was dependent on the thickness of the machined part. For thinner workpiece the results of the angles generated barely followed a trend, whereas for thicker part, the measured angles followed an excellent trend. The kerf accuracies were found to improve with the increase of wire tension for thin part, whereas for thick part the results of kerf width accuracies were inconsistent. In case of wire feed rate, it was found that comparatively lower settings of wire feed rates were favorable for machining thinner parts with enhanced corner accuracies. On the other hand, slightly higher wire feed rates provided better corner accuracies for thick part. Besides corner inaccuracy, profile undercuts and deviations from the machining paths were observed for lower wire tensions. Finally, it can be concluded that comparatively lower wire feed rate and higher wire tension provides improved corner and profile accuracies. however, for machining thinner sections using wire-EDM, the trends are not obvious.

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Cutting fluids used in machining have received a lot of attention due to their adverse environmental and economic effects. Researchers have studied cutting fluid usage in traditional machining processes such as turning, facing, milling, etc. However, few studies focused on the cutting fluid used in band sawing applications. This study reports a literature review of the usage of the cutting fluid in band sawing and their sustainable and economic aspects. A review of the literature and industrial data has shown that the majority of band saw blades use high-speed steel as the cutting tool material for cutting metal. This study presents a metric-based sustainability assessment and a detailed analysis of recent economic factors such as the cost of the cutting fluids used in band sawing through industrial case studies. A global survey of the cutting fluid usage in the bandsawing application has shown that the majority of the industry is employing flood coolant application. The flood coolant application cost can be as high as 8% of the total consumables cost of the band sawing process.