Overcut and material removal rate on electrochemical machining of aluminum and stainless steel using isolated brass electrode

The electrochemical machining has been developed as an alternative for conventional techniques of machining very hard materials and complex shape without any harm to tool and residual stresses. This paper addresses the influence of processing parameters on the overcut (OC) and Material Removal Rate (MRR) of a custome-built electrochemical machine. In addition, the angle of overcut for the workpieces were also examined. Stainless steel and aluminium plate with thickness of 0.4 mm as workpieces were machined using ECM equiped with a 3-mm isolated brass rod as electrode in sodium chloride as electrolityc solution. Experiments were conducted with the developed setup by varying the machining voltage and initial workpiece-to-electrode gap with a constant tool movement. MRR in ECM was obtained from weight loss measurement while image analysis using open source sofware (ImageJ) was applied to assist OC determination. The result shows that increase in machining voltage and gap enhances ion's mobility and conductivity for conduction, so that it results MRR, overcut and angle of overcut getting higher.