Modern cutting, drilling or milling tools are made of a carbide metal alloy and are exposed to extreme mechanical loads, high temperatures and abrasive wear. In order to meet the range of requirement criteria the best possible, the tool alloys are produced by powder metallurgy, cold-pressed into shape and then sintered.
Read here how our GraphitePeople
were able to help make the print sintering process more effective and efficient.
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Carbide metal tools are used in many volume-removing machining processes (lathing, milling, sawing). The manufacturing process is sophisticated and accessible worldwide. Competition is forcing manufacturers to continuously optimize their manufacturing processes and products.
Industry:
Tool, mold and machine construction
Procedure:
Solution:
Optimized sintering base
Services:
Analyses and simulations, new design, production of CFC sintering bases
Result:
Increase in added value through process efficiency (outputs per furnace run)
Sintering high-performance tools is technically demanding and expensive. The procurement costs alone for the raw materials used in powder form, such as tungsten, vanadium, tantalum and niobium carbide, are considerable. It is therefore crucial for the manufacturers of these tools to make the sintering process stable, efficient and trouble-free and trouble-free.
The furnace run is one of the last steps in the process chain and adds energy costs to the value creation that has already taken place. The quality of products manufactured using powder metallurgy can only be assessed after sintering. The optimal piece loading with tools is therefore a decisive competitive factor.
The question for us in this example was: How can we manage to increase the loading density and the degree of utilization in pressure sintering, i.e. increase the number of tools?
A challenge!
When looking at the status quo, the focus quickly fell on the graphite floor panel with a thickness of 40 mm that had previously been used. Using an FEM analysis we were able to determine the following optimization potentials:
. The new base plate measured only 20 mm with less deflection. This also resulted in an optimisation of the temperature distribution due to the reduced mass.
Based on our expertise, the customer was able to noticeably increase the output and thus the added value per furnace run. The new sintered underlays had already paid for themselves after about two months.
