Micro-EDM Process Sustainability Aspects

Nowadays the sustainability issues are trendy considering the environmental problems caused by an unbridled use of the resources. Governments are making efforts aiming to increase the industrial sensibility to environmental problems promoting actions to reduce the impact of their activities. The manufacturing technologies are involved in this scenario too. Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) is a technology that finds a wide use in the micromachining sector for a variety of drilling applications in automotive, aerospace, biomedical sectors on different materials such as stainless steels, titanium alloys and others metals regardless of their mechanical properties. In this paper, a method to evaluate the sustainability of this process is proposed, taking into account the consumption of the electrical energy, the wear of the tool electrode during the machining, the consumption of the dielectric fluid, the environmental impact and part conformance. This method was applied for the drilling of a component in biomedical sector such as a bone plates in titanium alloy for fractures of small body parts. The micro holes were executed in different conditions as regards both electrode material and dielectric fluid. The sustainability of the machining was evaluated for all the tested conditions. In this way, the best operative conditions to minimize the environmental impact by using this technology were found. Moreover, the more critical aspects were identified. This allows targeted actions to be taken to diminish the impact of these aspects.