The near dry EDM process uses a mixture of a liquid and a gas as dielectric medium. In this study, near dry EDM process at three levels of discharge energy and with two brass and copper electrode was studied to investigate the effects of tool material on machining performance. Also, the Taguchi method of design of experiments technique was employed to study the effects of nonelectrical parameters such as tool rotational speed, liquid flow rate, gas pressure and also discharge energy on material removal rate (MRR), electrode wear ratio (TWR) and surface roughness (SR) and also the analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed to find the most important factors effecting MRR, TWR and SR. The results showed that copper electrode has higher MRR and lower TWR as compared to brass electrode. Also the analysis of main effect plots obtained by Taguchi method indicated that MRR and SR is enhanced by increasing water flow rate and discharge energy and also increasing gas pressure leads to lower TWR. The ANOVA results showed that discharge energy is the most important factor influencing MRR, TWR and SR.