State of the Art on Laser Assisted Electrochemical Machining

Laser Assisted Electrochemical Machining (LAECM) has proven its advantages and applications over almost all the range of conductive materials. It offers its adroitness to generate simple shapes to complex shapes from macro to micro machining. Laser assisted ECM is a hybrid approach of machining which has been manifested to obtain improved results in terms of surface integrity, thermal damage, geometrical tolerance and material removal rate. Laser assisted Electrochemical Machining (LAECM) is a hybrid machining process in which laser enhances the electrochemical dissolution process by increasing the temperature and hence the current density of the electrolyte. Laser helps to remove material from the particular machining zone and stray machining effect is reduced and thus improves the precision and efficiency of LAECM, also productivity. New route of laser assisted hybrid machining processes has been built in the past decade by few of the researchers to reduce the intrinsic problems of ECM. This paper reviews on the investigation into LAECM process. The article also highlights various possibilities and applications of LAECM process. There are various challenges in LAECM process which have been also discussed in this paper.