Effect of potassium chloride and potassium sulphate electrolyte solution on surface roughness and material removal rate in electro chemical machining (ECM)‎

Abstract EN

Electrochemical machining (ECM) is nontraditional machining which is used to remove metal by anodic dissolution.

In this study the metal workpiece (WP) was stainless steel (AISI 316) and potassium chloride (KCl) and potassium sulphate (K2SO4) solutions were used as electrolyte, and the tool was used from copper.

In this work the experimental parameters that used were concentration of solution, current and voltage as input.

While surface roughness (Ra) and material removal rate (MRR) were the output.

The experiments on electrochemical machining with using concentration (10, 20 and 30) g/1, current (2, 5 and 10) A and voltage (6, 12 and 20)V.

Gap size between tool and WP (0.5) mm.

The results showed that (K2SO4) solution gave surface roughness and material removal rate less than (KCl) solution in all levels, maximum (Ra) is (0.471) and minimum (0.049), while (KCl) solution gave maximum (Ra) was (4.497) and minimum was (0.S37).

Generally increasing in machining parameter (concentration of solution, current and voltage) lead to increase in (Ra) and (MRR).

This study aims to compare the effect of using different electrolyte solution including potassium chloride (KCl) and potassium sulphate (K2SO4) on the surface roughness (Ra) and material removal rate (MRR).