Investigation of machining characteristics for electrochemical micro-deburring of the AZ31 lightweight magnesium alloy

The characteristics of materials that could be used in the automobile or the electronics industries are not only required to be lightweight but also to exhibit high-strength. Because of these necessities, magnesium alloy, a lightweight material, has been developed and research has been done to apply it to each industry. Magnesium alloy is not only being applied to electronic equipment such as cellular phone parts and laptop computer frames, but also to the enlarging of vehicle bodies and to airplane parts. With the increasing requests for this material, magnesium alloy manufacturing techniques and machining methods have also been under examination throughout the world. These applications of magnesium alloy are mostly produced by a die-casting process because of the mass production process. However, the die-casting process makes too many microscopic burrs and this has the bad effect of electric jamming in electronics and can induce injuries in the user. So, in this paper, to remove microscopic burrs on magnesium alloy, an electrochemical deburring process is suggested. Moreover, its conditions are studied and the machining characteristics are evaluated for each machining condition such as electrolytes, applied currents, duty factors and machining gap.