Pulsed electrochemical machining of powder metallurgy steels

In this study, the potential of pulsed electrochemical machining (PECM) for the machining of powder metallurgy steels (PM-steels) is presented. PM-steels are characterized by high hardness and high wear resistance, so that they are commonly used as materials for forming tools [1]. As an alternative procedure to conventional manufacturing technologies like milling, PECM can be applied to machine these steels. Therefore the erosion characteristics of three different PM-steels with PECM were determined by performing systematic experiments, applying a commercial PEMCenter 8000. An analysis of the precision of the manufactured geometries and the possibility of generating defined surface qualities are contents of this study.