A comparative investigation on magnetic field–assisted EDM of magnetic and non-magnetic materials

Assisted magnetic field is an important technique, successfully applied to electrical discharge machining process. In this paper, a comparative study of magnetic field–assisted electrical discharge machining (MF-EDM) has been conducted to process magnetic and non-magnetic materials. Firstly, a series of MF-EDM experiments on selected magnetic material (SKD11) and selected non-magnetic material (Ti6Al4V) were carried out to obtain material remove rate (MRR), surface quality (Ra), and energy efficiency. Then, the influences of magnetic field and servo voltage on machining performance of MF-EDM were completely analyzed under SKD11 and Ti6Al4V. It can be found out that the effects of appropriate magnetic field on two different materials contribute to increasing energy utilization efficiency and MRR under the similar surface roughness. Particularly, MRR of magnetic materials (SKD11) can be improved more significantly than that of non-magnetic materials (Ti6Al4V) due to the smooth debris removal of magnetic materials via Lorenz force acting. These researches could help better understand the effect of magnetic field on the electric discharge machining process of different kinds of materials.