Prediction of wire wear through pixels in single pass WEDM

In Wire Electric Discharge Machining (WEDM) the wire electrode wears out with wear of the workpiece, this worsens the surface quality because of deposition of three-fourth area of solidified material on the eroded surface of wire. Higher material removal rate, lowers the electrical conductivity of the dielectric and results in reduction of gap between wire electrode and workpiece. The paper reports the experimental investigation carried out to estimate the brass wire wear and kerf width using image pixels, Matlab tool and design of experiments. Experiments have been conducted on T160G12 alloy steel using Electronica Sprintcut 734-WEDM machine. Data has been generated by machining straight single pass cuts of length 53.22 mm and height 20 mm. L₁₈ mixed orthogonal array based on Taguchi design has been used to determine S/N ratio, analysis of Variance and `F´ test values.