Experimental investigation on carbon steel micro-rod machining by LS-WEDT

This article proposed for the first time the method of the low-speed wire electrical discharge turning (LS-WEDT) combined with the multiple cutting strategy to fabricate carbon steel micro-rods. First, the rotating apparatus submerged in working fluid is designed and manufactured to enable the low-speed wire electrical discharge machine to generate cylindrical geometries. Besides, material removal rate, surface roughness, and machining precision of the micro-rod manufactured by the LS-WEDT are, respectively, investigated. Moreover, the surface microstructure and surface chemical reaction of micro-rods are characterized using scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive spectroscopy analysis. Experimental results display that the micro-rod of 70?µm diameter and 1000?µm length can be successfully fabricated. More importantly, the mean absolute diameter deviation of the micro-rod fabricated by LS-WEDT is 0.65?µm and the surface roughness is 0.53?µm, which identified the high machining precision and good surface quality of the micro-rod.