Experimental investigation on the machining performance of AZ91D (90% Mg) alloy by wire-cut EDM Malaya Kumar Debta a,⁎ , Ravi Mishra a , Manoj Masanta a a Department of Mechanical Engineering, NIT Rourkela-769008, Odisha, India article info Article history: Received 26 December 2019 Received in revised form 17 March 2020 Accepted 20 March 2020 Available online xxxx Keywords: AZ91D alloy Wire-EDM Pulse-on-time Wire tension Taper-ness Kerf width abstract AZ91D (90% Mg) is the most fascinating magnesium alloy possessing excellent stiffness, high strength-to- weight ratio and good environmental corrosion resistance along with good cast-ability, which increases its applications in automobile and aerospace industries. The present work is focused on the machinability of AZ91D magnesium alloy by wire-EDM method during the formation of a cylindrical pin. Additionally, the effects of processing parameters mainly the cutting velocity and the wire tension on the machining performances and characteristics of the cutting quality, i.e., cutting velocity, taper-ness and kerf width have been studied. The experimental results show that with the increase of pulse-on-time (T on ) the cut- ting velocity increases; whereas, the kerf width and taper-ness of the machined proﬁle reduce after an optimal value. On the other side, no signiﬁcant effect of wire tension has been observed on the machining performances. Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and Peer-review under responsibility of the scientiﬁc committee of the 2nd International Con- ference on Processing and Characterization of Materials 1. Introduction Magnesium is the lightest structural metal, which can form alloy with metals like Al, Zn, Mn, Si, Cu, rare earth and Zr, and exhi- bits high speciﬁc strength, stiffness, good thermal conductivity, high dimensional stability, damping capacity and good machin- ability [1,2]. Accordingly, the magnesium alloys widen their appli- cations in the ﬁeld of aerospace and automobile industry. Machining of Mg alloys by conventional route is extremely chal- lenging due to their low melting point of magnesium (421 °C), and afﬁnity towards oxygen even at ambient temperature [3]. Further, the machining of Mg alloys using conventional technique performed by direct contact of tool and workpiece leads to adverse plastic deformation in the component and development of heat affected zone [4]. Hence, because of noncontact between the tool and workpiece non-traditional machining processes like electro discharge machining (EDM) is a viable alternative for machining Mg alloys, which restricts the high temperature within a speciﬁed zone, and limits the deformation and other mechanical breakages during the machining. Wire-EDM (which is a thermo-mechanical process) is a non-traditional machining process used to machining of difﬁcult to machine materials with intricate shape. However, the choice of cutting parameters to attain higher cutting efﬁciency with high accuracy in wire-EDM continues to be a matter of research [5]. The fundamental performance measures in wire- EDM are material removal rate and surface ﬁnish; whereas, peak current, pulse duration, and wire tension are the machining parameters which have an effect on the machining performances [6,7]. In the present work, an attempt has been made to machining a circular pin from AZ91D Mg Alloy plate and to ﬁnd out the effects of major parameters of wire-EDM such as pulse-on-time (T on ), and wire tension (W t ) on the performance namely cutting velocity (V c ), kerf width (mm) and taper-ness. 2. Experimental details The material used in the present study is AZ91D Mg-alloy plate of size 45 mm  25 mm  10 mm; the chemical composition of the material is illustrated in Table 1. From the speciﬁed plate, cylindrical pin-shaped samples of 6 mm diameter were cut using wire-EDM (Make: Electronica- Ecocut). Zinc coated brass wire of diameter 0.25 mm was used as electrode to cut the material as it has ability to withstand high ten- sile stress and economical. Positive polarity, i.e., workpiece positive and tool electrode negative condition was used during the Wire- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.03.540 2214-7853/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and Peer-review under responsibility of the scientiﬁc committee of the 2nd International Conference on Processing and Characterization of Materials ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: malayakumar.nm@gmail.com (M. Kumar Debta). Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Materials Today: Proceedings journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matpr Please cite this article as: M. Kumar Debta, R. Mishra and M. Masanta, Experimental investigation on the machining performance of AZ91D (90% Mg) alloy by wire-cut EDM, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.03.540