14. Analysis and Modeling on Defects of Deep Micro-holes Fabrication in Stainless Steel Through μECM

Fabrication of micro-holes in difficult-to-machine and exotic materials is a routine requirement for various products such as wire drawing dies, miniature oil sprayers, turbine blades, miniature mixers, cooling channels, spinner holes, miniature oil atomizers, inkjet printer nozzle, diesel fuel injection nozzles, and drug delivery orifices. Electrochemical micro-machining (µECM) is one of the cost-effective techniques and a better alternative for the micro-holes fabrication in such difficult-to-cut materials with good surface finish. In view of minimizing the defects of deep micro-holes fabrication, an analysis and regression modeling on defects of deep micro-holes fabrication in stainless steel plate through µECM process has been done. In this study, three defects such as “depth of curve formed at entrance of micro-hole”, “overcut”, and “diameter difference in micro-hole” have been analyzed in deep micro-holes fabrication through µECM process. All experiments are conducted using fabricated cylindrical tungsten micro-tool electrode of diameter 108 µm. Machining parameters are optimized using Taguchi technique and ANOVA is employed to investigate the influence of these parameters on the response outputs, i.e., “depth of curve formed at entrance of micro-hole”, “overcut”, and “diameter difference in micro-hole”.