Published Paper Details:

Advance difficult to machine materials such as ceramics motivated researchers and engineers from manufacturing industries to develop newer methods of machining of such materials. Advanced machining processes such as electrical discharge machining and electrochemical machining are being effectively used in industries but for electrically conducting materials only. Ceramics such as alumina is electrically non conductive material and have superior properties and wide spread applications such as cutting tools, electrical and thermal insulators, turbine blades etc. Hence the machining of alumina ceramic material becomes very important. But due to electrically non conductive property of alumina, advance machining processes such as Electrochemical machining (ECM) and Electrical discharge machining (EDM) cannot be applied and other machining operations like ultrasonic machining and ion beam machining have their own limitations. So in the present research paper, a hybrid machining process, electrochemical spark machining (ECSM) setup was designed, fabricated and utilized for experimental investigations to find the suitability of developed set up for machining of non conductive alumina ceramic. The effect of various machining parameters such as DC supply voltage, electrolyte concentration, Pulse-on-time, pulse-off-time and inter electrode gap on different response characteristics such as material removal rate, overcut and taper generated during machining of hole was investigated and suitable range of the process parameters of the developed set up was determined.