Machinability Studies on Wire Electrical Discharge Machining (WEDM) of AA2014 Alloy using Taguchi Grey Approach

AA 2014 is a copper based aluminium alloy which is having exceptional mechanical characteristics such as better strength, ductility and lesser fatigue. AA 2014 is most generally employed in various engineering applications such as fabrication of structural components, defence applications and manufacturing of aerospace components. Also, this material possess better resistant to corrosion which makes this material best suitable for numerous engineering applications. Unconventional methods of machining have been evolved for producing intricate shapes in electrically conductive components. Wire Electrical Discharge Machining (WEDM) is one among the unconventional machining method which is used for making intricate shape on any electrically conductive work material. In this work, an experimentation has been carried out on WEDM of AA 2014 alloy, employing Taguchi’s technique. The experimental runs have been conducted by taking into account, the process variables such as pulse-on-time, pulse-off-time and peak current, at three different levels. Material Removal Rate (MRR) and Surface Roughness (SR) are considered as important performance parameters in this analysis. The significance of individual process variables is determined by ANOVA analysis. The importance of independent variables on desired performance measures are also revealed by contour plot analysis.