Sustainable Manufacturing of Asymmetric Miniature-Sized Ratchet Wheels by Wire Electrical Discharge Machining

In this paper, the outcomes of an investigation conducted on the sustainable manufacturing of asymmetric rotary miniature-sized ratchet wheels of stainless steel (SS) 304 by a vertically traveling wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) process are reported. The consumptions of energy and wire material are the process sustainability indicators considered in this work. Box-Behnken-based seventeen experiments were conducted by varying spark-on-time ‘Ton’, spark-off-time ‘Toff’, and wire rigidity ‘WT’. Desirability function analysis (DFA) based on multi-response optimization was performed to obtain an optimum setting of WEDM parameters to manufacture miniature-sized ratchet wheels with minimum energy and wire consumption. Sustainable manufacturing of ratchet wheels is performed at the optimum parameter combination of Ton-1.5 µs; Toff-40.5 µs; WT-1260 g, for the least values of energy consumption of 0.64 kWh and wire consumption of 20.11 g with no wire breakage and a significant reduction in total idle time. This ratchet wheel, manufactured at optimum parameters of WEDM, was also found to have a good finish (average surface roughness ‘Ra’-1.08 µm and maximum surface roughness ‘Rt’-6.81 µm) and defect-free tooth flank surfaces. Overall, it is concluded that WEDM has the potential to achieve sustainability in the manufacturing of miniature-sized ratchet wheels and other gears. The outcomes of this work will extensively facilitate engineers and researchers in selecting a suitable range of machining parameters for sustainable manufacturing of miniature-sized wheels and gears.