The path towards delamination-free drilling of composite materials

Intrinsically smart, metal matrix composites (MMCs) are lightweight and high-performance materials having ever expanding industrial applications. The structural and the functional properties of these materials can be altered as per the industrial demands. The process technologies indulged in fabrication and machining of these materials attract the researchers and industrial community. Hybrid electric discharge machining is a promising and the most reliable nonconventional machining process for MMCs. It exhibits higher competence for machining complex shapes with greater accuracy. This paper presents an up-to-date review of progress and benefits of different routes for fabrication and machining of composites. It reports certain practical analysis and research findings including various issues on fabrication and machining of MMCs. It is concluded that polycrystalline tools and diamond-coated tools are best suitable for various conventional machining operations. High speed, small depth of cut and low feed ra...

Fabrication and Machining of Metal Matrix Composites: A Review

Metal matrix composites (MMCs) are newly advanced materials having the properties of light weight, high specific strength, good wear resistance and a low thermal expansion coefficient. These materials are extensively used in industry. Greater hardness and reinforcement makes it difficult to machine using traditional techniques, which has impeded the development of MMCs. The use of traditional machinery to machine hard composite materials causes serious tool wear due to the abrasive nature of reinforcement. These materials can be machined by many non-traditional methods like water jet and laser cutting but these processes are limited to linear cutting only. Electrical discharge machining (EDM) shows higher capability for cutting complex shapes with high precision for these materials. The paper presents a review of EDM process and year wise research work done in EDM on MMCs. The paper also discusses the future trend of research work in the same area.

Review of research work in sinking EDM and WEDM on metal matrix composite materials

Blind-hole drilling of Al2O3/6061Al composite using rotary electro-discharge machining

Multi-objective optimisation of high-speed electrical discharge machining process using a Taguchi fuzzy-based approach

Preliminary study of material removal in electrical-discharge machining of SiC/Al

A B S T R A C T This study explores an innovative metal machining process by using bacteria. Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans (At. ferrooxidans) was used to remove metal. The bacteria first carried out the oxidation of Fe 2+ to Fe 3+ . The produced Fe 3+ then oxidized the metals. The machining of copper, nickel and aluminum was experimentally investigated using both the cells and the culture supernatant of At. ferrooxidans. The material removal rates of these three metals were 2.0, 1.6, 0.55 and 5.5, 4.2 and 0.7 mg/h cm 2 by using cells and culture supernatant, respectively. Higher metal removal rate was achieved for copper by using the culture supernatant. A microbe-based fabrication of micropattern is thus feasible applying the current principle. 2012 CIRP.

H.S. Hsu

Papers

Preliminary study of material removal in electrical-discharge machining of SiC/Al

Metal removal by Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans through cells and extra-cellular culture supernatant in biomachining