METALLURGY

As important as manufacture and design, the selection of a suitable material for your extrusion process is critical. Concern must be given to a variety of steel properties including yield, tensile strength, elongation, and ductility to name a few. With over sixty years of manufacturing experience, we have developed an extensive data base of metallurgical solutions for all types of processing problems. An example of our problem solving capabilities is detailed below:

Problem: die leakage after cleaning die in a high temp oven.

Analysis: When cleaning their die at elevated temperatures, the customer was found to be approaching critical “ transformation” temperatures for the steel they were using. In effect, the die was actually being “ stress relieved” with each oven cycle causing distortion of the die bodies. This distortion was preventing a complete seal of the die mating surfaces.

Solution: customer required oven cleaning. As such, we recommended a “ hot work” tool steel that would withstand oven temperatures while maintaining dimensional integrity of the die.

Problem: Breakage of cam race manufactured from high hard (60Rc) D2 tool steel

Analysis: reviewed location of breakage and part design/function and concluded that D2 lacked the ductility necessary to perform as required

Solution: recommended S7 tool steel to improve impact toughness of cam race while still providing wear resistance required.