Response Variation with Electrical Parameters during Slitting of Copper Thin Sheet in Micro-Electrical Discharge Machining

The rising demand for high-precision micro-components in MEMS has led to the development of different micro-fabrication processes. Over the last twenty years, micro-slitting of thin sheets with a particular emphasis on materials used in MEMS has gained a lot of interest. Copper is a highly used material in electronic gadgets, and the slitting operation of copper thin sheets has to be explored thoroughly. In this research work, the micro-slitting and machinability study of copper has been performed by varying the electrical process parameters. Variations in responses such as material removal rate (MRR), overcut (OC), and edge deviation (ED) corresponding to process parameters are also observed. Responses are optimized with the utilization of overall evaluation criteria (OEC), with the best parameters being a voltage of 80 V and a capacitance of 100 pF.