Experimental Investigation of Vibration-assisted Pulsed Electrochemical Machining

Flushing Enhancement with Vibration and Pulsed Current in Electrochemical Machining

“…Although the main application of this study was for ECM of Domex 550MC HSLA steel, plain carbon 1018 steel was used in the experiments. By calculating specific material removal rates (the variable C in equation ( 5)) of each chemical elements of each materials (Table 2), it can be shown that the specific material removal rates of both materials are comparable: 1018 = 3.67 × 10 −2 mm 3 /As and = 3.63 × 10 −2 mm 3 /As [8]. Workpieces were sawed and ground to rectangular samples (50 × 60 × 3.5 mm).…”

“…When applying pulsed voltage in ECM, the combination of peaked voltage, duty cycle and voltage frequency exert influence on MRR and dimension accuracy. ECM using 9.5 mm stainless steel electrodes with Teflon coated on both outside and inside, 60 mm × 40 mm × 6.3 mm 1018 steel workpiece, 1 mol/L KBr electrolyte, 13 A average current was studied [8]. When the current frequency was switched from 0 to 60 Hz, the MRR increased slightly from 34.3 to 34.9 mm 3 /min, but when increasing the current frequency to 100 Hz, the MRR then increased to 36.4 mm 3 /min.…”

Computer Simulation of Low Frequency Vibration in Electrochemical Machining

“…In traditional vibration-assisted ECM the anode/cathode were vibrated in the vertical direction, thus the resulted by-products, that deposited on either electrode due to gravity, would hinder ion transport mechanism. A horizontal and vibrationassisted ECM was proposed as a remedial solution [6,16,[19][20][21], in which a workpiece vibrated in the horizontal direction instead of the vertical direction to facilitate flushing of the resulted by-products.…”

“…During an ECM process, a typical removal rate of an anode is 45.3 mm 3 /min which is much less than the electrolyte flow rate of 2.5 L/min (2,500,000 mm 3 /min) [6]. It is assumed that by-product particle interaction is insignificant, so single particle instead of multiple particles can be used in simulation of debris flushing.…”

“…− Applying a high voltage to increase migration rates [2][3][4] − Applying pulsed current instead of using direct current [5][6][7][8] − Increasing high electrolyte flow rates to increase diffusion rates [3,9] − Vibrating of either workpiece or electrode at low vibration frequency to increase the convection rates [8,[10][11][12][13][14]] − Applying ultrasonic vibration of electrode or via electrolyte [13,15,16]. Convection is the most significant factor that affects ion transport mechanism.…”