Experimental investigation of vegetable oil as dielectric fluid in Electric discharge machining of Ti-6Al-4V

Electric Discharge Machining (EDM) is used to machine difficult to cut materials in the area of making dies, mould and tools. Titanium alloy is one of the difficult to machine materials which used in aerospace industries due to its light weight and high hardness value. In this work, titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) is machined using vegetable oil based dielectric fluids and conventional dielectric fluid and their surface roughness values are analyzed. Vegetable oil based dielectric fluids are considered namely, Sunflower,
Canola, Jatropha oils and conventional dielectric fluid namely kerosene are used in this investigation. Surface roughness values are measured by talysurf surface roughness tester. The result showed that vegetable oil has similar dielectric properties, erosion mechanism compared with conventional dielectric and it could be effectively replaced as dielectric fluid in EDM process. The proposed vegetable oil based dielectric fluid is biodegradable, eco friendly and thus leading sustainable manufacturing.