Multiscale and Multidisciplinary Modeling, Experiments and Design https://doi.org/10.1007/s41939-020-00070-6 ORIGINAL PAPER Powder mixed-electrical discharge machining (EDM) with the electrode is made by fused deposition modeling (FDM) at Ti-6Al-4V machining procedure Mohsen Asghari Ilani 1 · Mohammad Khoshnevisan 2 Received: 27 October 2019 / Accepted: 13 March 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Abstract Rapid prototyping (RP) is a collection of techniques, and it is used in many industries to make a robust model of a mechanical sample instantly. RP is usually implemented by employing 3D printing or additive manufacturing (AM) technology with three-dimensional modeling. In the context of RP, rapid tooling (RT) is the result of applying the RP with non-conventional tooling. RT causes many discharge channels between the electrode in electro-discharge machining (EDM). In our study, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene is coated with a thin layer of copper and is used as an electrode tool in powder mixed electro- discharge machining (PM-EDM). We have employed the fused deposition modeling (FDM) method of rapid prototyping to improve the conductivity of the electrode tools for the PM-EDM. Cost, machining-time, and the quality of the surface are the significant outputs of the PM-EDM process for the fabrication of tools in sensitive industries. In our present research, a new kind of electrode is compared with a solid electrode with powder and without powder. Material removal rate (MRR), tool wear rate (TWR), and surface roughness (SR) have been measured for both scenarios. In this method, peak current, pulse-on time, and concentration of aluminium powder are the input parameters. We have also added a surfactant on kerosene for separating and distributing the powders. Our study demonstrates that the RP electrodes have the potential for utilizing the PM-EDM tools with complex shapes. The conventional processes do not make these complex shapes. Indeed, comparing the results of the output parameters in our proposed method with the PM-EDM existing methods indicates an improvement for MRR, TWR, and SR, by 33%, 31%, and 77%, respectively. Hence, the average surface quality, which is created by the PM-EDM, has been substantially improved. Thus, our proposed method is cost-effective, and it can be used to create various complex topologies, potentially in the medical and aerospace industries. Keywords Rapid tooling (RT) · Fused deposition modeling (FDM) · Powder mixed-electro-discharge machining (PM-EDM) · Additive manufacturing (AM) · Ti-6Al-4V 1 Introduction The three-dimensional printing process is one of the additive manufacturing products which is used to make physically a 3-D solid with data. This process is the result of scanning or additive manufacturing format (Gibson et al. 2010; Saxena B Mohammad Khoshnevisan m.khoshnevisan@northeastern.edu Mohsen Asghari Ilani mohsenasghari1990@ut.ac.ir 1 School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran 2 College of Science, Physics Department, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA and Metkar 2018). The process makes a sample by adding the material in a layer by layer to fabricate a 3-D part to cre- ate complex shapes with lower cost compared to the other conventional processes (Abbas et al. 2007). Fused deposi- tion modeling (FDM) is one of the additive manufacturing methods usually used to create a 3-D printing model, and it is utilized for prototype purposes. In this procedure, a polymer laminated printing or metal in wire shape from a coil applies material layer by layer and makes parts (Kumar et al. 2010, 2019a). Sensitive and accurate industries have been follow- ing this method to fabricate more complex parts with high accuracy on hard materials. Powder mixed electro-discharge machining is known as the non-conventional manufacturing process that removes material without any physical contact or pressure. This is accomplished with the energy feature 123