In recent years, Inconel 718 is widely used in industries like aerospace, oil and gas, and automobile due to their unique combination of hardness, strength, temperature, and corrosion resistance properties. However, these materials pose challenges during conventional machining due to their high work hardening tendency, poor thermal conductivity, and chemical affinity towards the tool material. Consequently, rapid tool wear during the machining of Inconel 718 results in poor productivity. To overcome these issues, a non-contact hybrid electrical discharge and arc machining (HEDAM) process has been developed to machine such difficult-to-cut materials. Firstly, the design and development of the HEDAM circuit has been discussed. Subsequently, the working principle of the newly developed process has been studied followed by its performance comparison with the conventional EDM process. In addition, the material removal mechanism has also been discussed in detail. Finally, experimental results were reported, where holes were drilled using the developed HEDAM process. The HEDAM process has exhibited significant improvements in terms of material removal rate (MRR) which is around 12 times higher and electrode wear ratio (EWR) that is half when compared to conventional EDM. This high performance HEDAM process resulted in successful and efficient drilling of Inconel 718. © 2018, Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature.