Predicting Surface Roughness of WEDMed Wc-Co Composite Using Box-Behnken Response Surface Method

Abstract

Wire electro discharge machining is vital to cut electrically conductive, hard, tool-die Composite materials. Optimization of WEDM involves thermo, electric, material and mechanical parameters. Achieving best possible output is one of the challenges of research and manufacturing community. Box-Behnken is a response surface methodology that can reach objective function in as few as 15 experimental runs. The present work discusses RSM as applied to wedm of tungsten carbide cobalt metal matrix composite. Selected input parameters were, on-time, off-time and wire tension. Design of experiments was used, Mathematical models were developed and the effects investigated for the response of surface roughness. Response contours been utilized to find optimum conditions and correlations developed were verified. The error established was 4.6% and a high coefficient of determination R sq (97%) promises satisfactory performance.