**4. Conclusions**

A study of the optimum conditions for pulsed electrochemical micromachining of stainless steel has been presented. The equipment and the conditions for the process have been described. In order to find the optimum parameters for the process, the most important variables for the performance of the process have been taken into account. These variables were confinement, surface roughness, material removal rate and efficiency. Observing the results of the experiments, it can be stated that surface roughness increases with the pulse on-time of the voltage signal, whereas the confinement is better when the pulse on-time is lower. The passivation phenomenon takes place at voltage amplitude values lower than 12 V and disappears at higher voltages. The material removal rate is higher when both voltage amplitude and pulse on-time grow. The efficiency of the process is an important variable which increases with voltage amplitude and pulse on-time. Nevertheless, these variables must not be chosen beyond the limits of acceptable surface roughness and confinement. These limits have been set at 16 V and 80 ns, respectively, in this study.
