Scaling approach towards electrochemical micromachining: a method to evaluate similarity

The electrochemical micromachining (ECMM) system is a modern equipment well thought out as the phenomenon of conventional electrochemical machining (ECM) system in microscale. The ECM system and ECMM system are similar, but the practice method and mechanism involved in the ECM system are analogous to those of the ECMM system, i.e., the differences in machining conditions and machining performance give rise to a factor called the scale effect. In this paper, ECMM has been applied with the advantageous concept called scale effect. Single factor experiments are conducted in which voltage, duty ratio, and tool feed rate are considered as the input factors for the exploration of the different grades of scale effect through the material removal rate, circularity, and overcut. The scale effects that occurred during machining are found using the similarity precision of the micro- and macrosystems based on the similarity theory. Quantitative evaluation of the scale effects is done for the ECMM process. The evaluation showed greater similarity precision indicating a larger significant scale effect. The output values of MRR, circularity, and overcut were normalized which also showed a positive scale effect. The research on scale effects delivers benefits in engineering such as optimizing the processing parameters involved and improving the machining performances of ECMM.