Development and application of Cu-SWCNT nanocomposite–coated 6061Al electrode for EDM

Electric discharge machining (EDM), a popular non-traditional machining process, is applied for machining very hard conductive materials with desired shape, size, and dimensional accuracy. Generally, copper is used as EDM tool due to its excellent electrical and thermal conductivities. The scarcity and higher cost of copper is called for its replacement with aluminum and its alloys in the field of electrical, electronic, and mechanical industries. In this paper, a copper-single wall carbon nanotube (Cu-SWCNT) nanocomposite was deposited on 6061 aluminum and used as EDM electrode. Prior to deposition, the 6061aluminium surface was anodized to achieve a strong adhesive bond between coating and the substrate. A cationic dispersing agent (cetyl tri-methyl ammonium bromide) was mixed with electrolytic bath for getting a stable, colloidal, and uniform dispersed SWCNT copper sulfate solution. The surface of electrode and workpiece was characterized with SEM-EDX. The EDM operation was performed on AISI 304 SS workpiece using Cu-SWCNT nanocomposite–coated 6061Al electrode and compared the performances with uncoated and copper-coated 6061 aluminums. The experimental result showed that the MRR was increased by 3.13% and 14.52% and electrode wear rate was decreased by 21.04% and 29.6% for copper-coated and Cu-SWCNT composite–coated 6061Al electrodes, respectively, compared to uncoated or base 6061Al electrode.