Sustainable Eco-friendly Wire-cut Electrical Discharge Machining: Gas Emission Analysis

Abstract Wire-cut electrical discharge machining (WEDM) is the highly essential unconventional electro-thermal machining process to cut the contour profile of hard materials in modern production industries. The various environmental impacting wastes (by evaporating and reacting hydro-carbon dielectric fluid) are produced during the WEDM process and these are harmful to the machine operators. These wastes are minimized by a near-dry WEDM process wherein the pressurized air mixed with a small amount of water is used as a dielectric substance. In this research, influences, and contributions of machining parameters such as air pressure, mixing water flow rate, spark current and pulse width on gas emission concentration (GEC), materials removal rate (MRR), and relative emission rate (RER) of sustainable near-dry WEDM process have been optimized by Taguchi analysis. RER is investigated to analyze the effects of machining factors on gas emission and machining rate combinedly. It was revealed that the maximum air pressure and flow rate of mixing water have significantly been promoting the sustainable near-dry WEDM process.