21. Effect of Different Electrodes on Micro-feature Fabrication in Biomedical Co-29Cr-6Mo Alloy Machined Using µ-EDM Process

µ-EDM is a versatile non-conventional machining process that is used to machine any difficult-to-cut material. In this process, material is removed due to sparking, which causes localized melting and evaporation. Beginning with metals, application of µ-EDM has now been extended to most materials, such as non-metals, alloys, composites, and ceramics. Co-29Cr-6Mo is a biomedical alloy which offers industrial/medical applications like hip implants, knee implants, drug delivery, and so on. For these applications, various micro-features are required on the surface along with different micro-devices. In the present work, machinability of Co-29Cr-6Mo using different popular electrode materials, namely copper, brass, and tungsten carbide is investigated. Micro-sized holes of equal dimension are machined at the same machining parameters using the three different electrodes and resulting cavities are imaged using optical microscope. Material removal rate, tool wear rate, and overcut between the three electrodes are evaluated, analysed, and compared. Use of tungsten carbide results in most accurate micro-features but consumes most time.