Electrical discharge machining (EDM) is an extremely prominent
machining process among newly developed non-traditional machining
techniques for difficult-to-cut materials. Though a lot of research has been done
to improve the process performance, optimal selection of process parameters
for the best performance measures still remains a challenge. In this work, the
performance of electrical discharge machining process when cutting hot work
tool steel 2714 with copper electrodes has been investigated. Orthogonal array
of L27 (3*4) based on the Taguchi experimental design is utilised to plan the
experiments. Raw data is assessed by the analysis of variance (ANOVA) to
find optimal conditions for response parameters. The main machining
parameters such as pulse-on time, pulse-off time, discharge current and average
machining voltage are chosen to determine the EDM response parameters such
as material removal rate, surface roughness and gap size. Response tables and
graphs are used to find the optimal parameter levels in the EDM process.