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Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 2970–2976 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings

ICMPC-2019

Fabrication of High Aspect Ratio WC-Co Micro Electrodes for

µ-EDM Application
Kamal Kumar 1, *, Uma Batra2
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, India-160012
2
Department of Materials and Metallurgy Engineeerng, Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, India-160012

Abstract

Electrode wear is a prominent issue in µ-EDM as it impairs the geometrical accuracy of the job. WC-Co composite possess high
melting temperature, good thermal conductivity and high mechanical rigidity, which makes it a suitable material for micro
electrodes for µ-EDM application. In present work, cylindrical micro electrodes of high aspect ratio have been fabricated rapidly
from rectangular sheet of WC-6%Co. To fabricate, high aspect micro electrodes from rectangular sheet, a new methodology has
been adopted that comprises of slicing of WC-Co rectangular sheet in required width using wire electrical discharge machining
(WEDM), followed by electrical discharge drilling (EDD) using tubular electrodes at pre-decided location on sliced strip to
obtain cylindrical electrodes. The different trials have been conducted on WC-6%Co to obtain the micro electrodes in the range
of diameter 500µm to 150 µm. Discharge current in EDD process has significant influence on diameter and aspect ratio of
fabricated micro electrodes. Micro electrode with highest aspect ratio of 45 has been obtained.

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the 9th International Conference of Materials Processing and Characterization, ICMPC-2019

Keywords: Micro electrodes, WC-Co composite, Electrical discharge Machining, Wire EDM

1. Introduction

For development of micro features or micro devices from difficult to cut materials such as micro dies, micro
probes, micro gears, MEMS (micro- electro-mechanical-system) etc, micro-EDM is considered as an important and
cost effective manufacturing process [1, 2]. In µ-EDM, the geometrical tolerances of micro features are greatly

* Corresponding author. Tel.:+91-9876183222;

E-mail address: kamaljangra84@gmail.com

2214-7853 © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the 9th International Conference of Materials Processing and Characterization, ICMPC-2019
 K. Kumar and U. Batra/ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 2970–2976 2971

affected by the tool electrode including its shape and size, electrical and thermal properties etc [3, 4]. Depending on
the thermal and physical properties of electrode materials, electrode wear affects the sparking conditions in µ-EDM.
Quickly deterioration of electrode shape impairs the geometrical accuracy of work-piece [5]. Thus, electrode wear is
a prominent issue in µ-EDM. Also, due to the micro level dimensions of µ-EDM electrodes, their manual handling
becomes difficult as the bending of electrode may affect the operation [2]. Therefore, electrode materials having
good electrical and thermal conductivity, higher boiling point and sufficient rigidity to withstand any deformation
during operation, are preferred for µ-EDM [6]. The commonly used electrodes in µ-EDM are made of copper, brass,
graphite, Cu-W, W and steel [7] in the form of cylindrical rod or tubes.
Electrode preparation and handling, counts over 50% of the total production cost in µ-EDM [8]. Using
conventional micro turning, fabrication of cylindrical electrodes with diameter in microns is difficult because of the
severe tool deflection. In past years, considerable research work has been explored on fabrication of micro
electrodes using EDM based processes such as wire electrical discharge grinding (WEDG) [9-11], reversed sinking
EDM (or block electrode method) [12, 13], micro electrochemical machining [14] etc. The block electrode-EDM
method is popularly used for fabricating on-machine micro electrodes for direct use in µ-EDM, thus, eliminating the
intervention of clamping and tool change over [2]. WEDG process utilises an additional wire EDM setup to
fabricate micro electrodes and micro geometries of selected design. Weng et al. [13] adopted the multi-EDM
grinding for fabricating micro electrodes of copper. In first step, copper rod of diameter 3.0 mm was machined on
wire EDM to reduce its diameter at 150µm and then electrode was grinded on CNC-EDM machine to produce the
electrode of 20µm diameter. But the length of fabricated micro electrode was only 0.6 mm. Yan et al. [9] used wire
EDM to fabricate micro end mills of diameter 50µm with noncircular cross-section from WC-8Co rod. Zhang et al.
[10] proposed a tangential feed WEDG (TF-WEDG) method for precision machining of micro electrodes. Singh et
al. [12] conducted an experimental study using Taguchi method to fabricate tungsten micro-rods on reversed µ-
EDM process. Micro-rod of diameter 186µm and length 970 µm was fabricated using optimized parameters in
reversed µ-EDM.
Using reversed-EDM and WEDG, it is very difficult to produce the micro electrodes that are longer than 1mm
[2]. Also, the fabrication of micro electrodes using these processes are very time consuming as the material removal
rate is very low. The additional tooling requirement and use of very fine wire (diameter less than 50µm) makes
WEDG a high investment process. However, reverse-EDM is simple and low investment process but tapering of the
micro electrode is a major problem in it [15]. Therefore, more research efforts are required in this direction to
fabricate micro electrodes in a short time with less cost and high precision.
In present work, micro electrodes of high aspect ratio have been fabricated from WC-6% Co sheet using
electrical discharge drilling (EDD) process. Use of rectangular metal plate has an advantage that the alloy material
with suitable properties can be easily fabricated by powder metallurgy or casting. Wire EDM has been used for
slicing of the metal sheet into required thickness. Using hollow cylindrical electrodes in EDD process, cylindrical
micro electrodes of high aspect ratio are obtained. The methodology and results are discussed in subsequent
sections.

2. Materials and Method

2.1 Electrode Material

To retain the geometrical accuracy of micro electrodes in µ-EDM process, wear resistance of the electrode
material should be high enough to withstand the repetitive spark erosions for larger numbers of cycles. Wear
resistance of an electrode is measured by an index ߣߩܿܶ௠ ܶ௕ [6], where ; ߣ: thermal conductivity, ρ: density, c:
specific heat, ܶ௠ : melting point, Tb: boiling point.
The electrode material should possess good thermal conductivity and high boiling point [6]. WC-6% Co,
posses’ high specific gravity, good thermal conductivity and higher boiling temperature (above 3000 0C). Also, due
to high rigidity of WC-Co risk of bending and deterioration of electrodes reduces. Therefore, WC-6% Co plate of
size 100 mm × 50 mm × 25 mm is selected as a work material for producing micro electrodes. The density, hardness
and conductivity of WC-6% Co is 14.9 gm/cm3, 77 HRC and 110 W/mk respectively.
2972 K. Kumar and U. Batra/ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 2970–2976

2.2 Electrical discharge Drilling (EDD) setup

In present work, a modified form of EDM, called electrical discharge drilling (EDD) with rotating tubular
electrode has been used to fabricate micro electrodes from rectangular sheet of WC-6%Co. The EDD machine used
in present work is a 3-axis controlled, where x-y movement of work table is manual while electrode feed (z-axis) is
servo controlled.
Figure 1 depicts the basic setup for EDD. Enlarged view of encircled portion shows the machining zone where
dielectric fluid jet is passed through the hollow cylindrical electrode to flush out the eroded debris. The working
principal of EDD is similar to EDM except the dielectric fluid is supplied at high pressure through the tubular
electrode at a given pressure [16]. The pressurised dielectric fluid, electrode rotation and servo controlled feed,
improves the material removal rate in EDD as compared to die sinking EDM. The EDD machine tool has variable
parameters in following range; discharge current (Ip); 1-9 amp, pulse-on time (Ton); 10-90μs, pulse-off time (Toff);
10-90μs and electrode rotational speed (ERS);130-160 rpm. Tap water as a dielectric fluid is pumped at fixed
flushing pressure (FP) of 6 bars.

Fig. 1 Schematic representation of EDMD setup

2.3 Methodology

Figure 1 shows the enlarged view of encircled portion representing the drilling zone. Primary sparking takes
place between the work surface and bottom of the tubular electrode resulting in material erosion and hence hole
drilling takes place. Due to secondary sparking, there is further material removal along the sides of electrode and
work material. As the electrode protrudes deep into the work material, the unmachined cylindrical portion of work
material goes up in hollow cylindrical electrode as shown in zoomed view of Figure 1. The basic idea of present
work is to obtain this unmachined cylindrical portion during EDD. This unmachined portion is used as a micro
electrode.
WC-6%Co plate is sliced into thin strips (of width X1) using wire EDM as represented in Figure 2(a). The
optimized process parameters of wire EDM for WC-6%Co are referred from [17]. It is to be clear that strip is not
completely separated from the metal sheet. After slicing the metal sheet, EDD is performed using suitable tubular
electrode at pre-fixed location on sliced metal strip to produce the cylindrical rods/electrodes as represented by
computer aided drawing in Figure 2(b).
 K. Kumar and U. Batra/ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 2970–2976 2973

After EDD operation, these high aspect ratio unmachined cylindrical rods are removed manually from the
sliced sheet. These unmachined cylindrical rods can be used directly as micro electrodes otherwise further dressing
can be done on reverse EDM process to make it finer.

(a) (b)
Figure 2 (a) Sliced Strip and position of tubular electrode (b) computer aided drawing of cylindrical rods after EDD
operation
3. Results and Discussions
Diameter and length of micro electrodes fabricated in present work, are significantly affected by the diameter of
tubular electrodes, machining parameters and flushing pressure of dielectric in EDD machine tool. Some trial
experiments are performed on EDD to obtain the effective working range of process parameters. Trial experiments
revealed that the discharge current (Ip) is the most effective parameter in EDD to produce high aspect ratio micro
electrodes. The effective range for process parameters are selected as Ip; 3-5 amp, Ton; 40-70µs and Toff; 40-60µs,
whereas maximum machining speed was obtained at electrode rotational speed (ERS) of 145 rpm. Flushing pressure
is remained fixed at 6 bar in present experimentation. Figure 3(a) shows the stereo-zoom microscopic image of
cylindrical electrodes produced on WC-Co sheet of width (X1); 1.2 mm with tubular electrode of inner diameter 0.9
mm and outer diameter 2 mm during trial experiments, whereas Figure 3(b) represents the top view of micro
electrodes produced under trial experiments on WC-Co sheet of width 0.8 mm with tubular electrode of inner
diameter 0.35 mm and outer diameter 1mm

(a) (b)
Fig. 3 Stereo zoom micro scope image of cylindrical micro electrodes on WC-Co sheet fabricated using (a) tubular
electrode of inner diameter 0.9 mm and (b) top view of micro electrode on sheet of width 0.8 mm and tubular
electrode of inner diameter 0.35 mm
2974 K. Kumar and U. Batra/ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 2970–2976

Table 1 Details of various Process Parameters and fabricated micro electrodes

Exp. Diameter Width of Machining Parameters Machining Dimensions of fabricated micro

No. of tubular sliced strip of EDD* Speed electrodes
electrode (in mm) (mm/min.)
(in mm)
D d (X1) Ip Ton Toff Diameter Max. Aspect
(amp) (µs) (µs) (µm) Length ratio
(mm)

1 1.5 0.7 1.0 4 50 50 4.1 500 18 40

2 1.5 0.7 1.0 5 50 50 4.5 400 18 45
3 1.5 0.7 1.2 4 70 50 4.0 450 17 38
4 1.5 0.7 1.2 5 60 40 4.6 350 14 25
5 1 0.35 0.8 3 50 50 3.5 210 8 38
6 1 0.35 0.8 4 60 50 3.8 180 7 39
7 1 0.35 0.8 5 60 40 4.1 150 4 26.7
8 1 0.35 0.6 4 50 50 4.2 180 8 44
*Electrode rotational speed: 145 rpm, Dielectric flushing pressure: 6 bar

For easier and quicker fabrication of cylindrical micro electrodes from rectangular metal strip, the width (x1) of
the sliced strip is selected according to outer (D) and inner diameter (d) of tubular electrode such that : D ≥ X1 > d.
To produce cylindrical micro electrodes from sliced metal strip, the centre to centre distance (y1) between two
successive drilling should be such that the material left between two cylindrical electrodes should be minimum for
easy and manually removal of electrodes. Therefore, y1 is selected as: 2 × (outer radius of tubular electrode + spark
gap during EDD operation). Generally, the value of spark gap remains under 100 µm and it depends on machining
parameters of EDD.
Table 1 shows the details of high aspect ratio cylindrical micro electrodes produced correspond to the different
EDD process parameters, width of sliced strip and tubular electrodes. The maximum length of fabricated electrodes
indicate that the micro electrode get damaged or break after drilling at a depth more than this length on sliced strip.
Figure 3(b) shows the metallurgical microscopic image of top view of micro electrode of diameter 210µm (with
length 8 mm) obtained in experiment no. 5. Diameter and length of micro electrode for a given sliced strip and
tubular electrode, is affected by the discharge parameters of EDD, flushing pressure and time of drilling. Increasing
the discharge energy, micro electrodes with small diameter (which is better) and shorter length will be obtained.
Increasing drilling time results into secondary sparking on cylindrical electrodes, thus electrode deterioration and
breakage occurs. In present machine tool, dielectric fluid is pumped at fixed pressure of 6 bar, which is a limitation
to obtained the micro electrodes of diameter under 100 µm. Reducing the dielectric fluid pressure, finer micro
electrodes can be fabricated.

3.1 SEM and EDS analysis

To evaluate the surface morphology of fabricated micro electrodes, SEM and EDS analysis is performed on
micro electrode of diameter 350µm obtained in exp. no 4. Figure 4 (a-c) shows the SEM images of fabricated micro
electrode of diameter 350 µm. Figure 4 (b-c) shows that the electrode surface consists of re-deposited or re-casted
material with some porosity. This re-casted material on work surface is also known as recast layer which is more
brittle in nature. EDS analysis shown in Figure 4 (d) shows that due to the secondary sparking between inner surface
of copper electrode and WC-Co electrode, traces of Cu elements have been transferred to the work surface. This
brittle alloyed surface layer on fabricated electrode is harder than base material, thus, micro electrode fabricated from
this method will be more wear resisting for µ-EDM application.
 K. Kumar and U. Batra/ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 2970–2976 2975

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 4 SEM image of (a) cylindrical electrode of diameter 350 µm, (b, c) surface morphology (d) EDS spectra of
fabricated electrode surface.

4. Conclusions

In present work, high aspect ratio cylindrical micro electrodes have been fabricated at high speed. The following
important findings are drawn:
• The electrode of minimum diameter of 150µm is obtained with a length of 4 mm, whereas electrodes of
diameter 180µm or above are obtained in a length of 8mm or above.
• The width (X1) of sliced strip should be selected according to the inner diameter (d) and outer diameter (D) of
tubular electrode, such that D ≥ X1 > d.
• Discharge current has significant influence on diameter and aspect ratio of fabricated micro electrodes.
• Using this methodology, large numbers of micro electrodes can be fabricated quickly and easily from
rectangular sheet of alloys and composite materials of tailored physical and thermal characteristics.
2976 K. Kumar and U. Batra/ Materials Today: Proceedings 18 (2019) 2970–2976

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