Taguchi method and Pareto ANOVA: An approach for process parameters optimization in micro-EDM drilling

Technological advances have facilitated many developments in the MEMS, electrical, medical and aerospace industries in recent years. As the devices commonly found in these industries have become smaller, so the requirements for high-precision machining techniques have become ever more pressing. Nowadays, micro-machining processes are playing an important role in satisfying these requirements. Among the various stages of micromachining, the fabrications of holes and pins are the most basic ones. Micro-hole drilling, is becoming increasingly more prominent in various precision industries, such as the production of automotive fuel injection nozzles, watch and camera parts. Micro-drilling can generate deeper holes with better straightness, better roundness and smoother surfaces. In this work, an orthogonal array, signal to noise (S/N) ratio and Pareto analysis of variance (ANOVA) are employed to analyze the effect of the micro drilling parameters such as feed rate, capacitance and voltage. The Taguchi technique for the design of experiment and the interaction of micro-EDM drilling parameters are investigated. From the experimental result and analysis shows that low feed rate, capacitance and voltage such combination of optimized parameters gives low value of surface roughness. The experimental result shows that the most influential parameter on the surface roughness is capacitance. Also from the analysis shows that Taguchi technique is suitable to solve the above problem with minimum number of tests. Keywords—Micro-EDM drilling, Optimization, Pareto ANOVA Surface roughness, Taguchi method of DOE ——————————  ——————————