Electrochemical micromachining (EMM) is a plausible method for manufacturing high accuracy and precision microscale components in a broad range of materials. EMM is commonly utilized to manufacture turbine blades for automobiles and aircrafts. In this present study, the EMM process was performed with a heat-treated copper tool electrode on aluminum 8011 alloy. The process parameters such as voltage, concentration of electrolyte, frequency, and duty factor were varied to analyze the effect of a heat-treated electrode on material removal rate (MRR), overcut, conicity, and circularity. It was observed that high MRR was obtained with lower overcut with an annealed electrode. The better conicity and circularity were obtained with a quenched electrode compared to other heat-treated and untreated tool electrodes. The artificial bee's colony (ABC) algorithm was used to identify the optimum parameters and, finally, the confirmation test was carried out to evaluate the error difference on the machining process. The optimum combination of input process parameters found using TOPSIS and ABC algorithm for the EMM process are voltage (14 V), electrolyte concentration (30 g/L), frequency (60 Hz), and duty cycle (33%) for the annealed tool electrode and voltage (14 V), electrolyte concentration (20 g/L), frequency (70 Hz), and duty cycle (33%) for the quenched tool electrode. It was confirmed that 95% of accurate response values were proven under the optimum parameter combination.
Keywords: ABC; EMM; machining; optimization; surface.