Improving Metal by Ultrasound

[qikbbstang]

Sorry you will have to download the entire issue od Shot Peener magazine in pdf to read this article. The article Ultrasound To Improve Metals is on page 22

http://www.theshotpeenermagazine.com/wp ... ll2015.pdf

For years I've always been fascinated by improving the strength of metals by shot peening, heat treating, cryogenics and etc.. I've learned that treating metals can exponentially increase the strength of metals and treating the metal is enormously complex and should only be done by pro's. It's cool to imagine you can simply hand a ring & pinion to some guy that drops it in liquid nitrogen bath for thirty minutes and you will see double the life in your rear end gear set. However the manufacturers of that gear set were not dumbbells. They believe they selected the perfect alloy, they shot peened your gears at just the optimum intensity, duration using the optimum hardness and size shot peening media and even heat treated your gears. Perhaps the cryogenic treatment alters that manufacturers "perfect metal conditioning" and instead makes your gear set excessively brittle.
Have to say Ultrasound looks to be very impressive for this application which seems to be freshly welded heavy steel plate.

[John Wallace]

They believe they selected the perfect alloy, they shot peened your gears at just the optimum intensity, duration using the optimum hardness and size shot peening media and even heat treated your gears. Perhaps the cryogenic treatment alters that manufacturers "perfect metal conditioning" and instead makes your gear set excessively brittle.

Interesting article.



Sounds like the ultrasonic does about the same as the cryo stuff does?

It doesn't change the metal, so not going against the manufacturers ideas on the best metal.
The cryo aligns the 'grains' of the metal so it's not haphazrd, like in the article posted above.
One nice thing from the article is it sounds like it is a lot easier to accomplish this task.

Be interesting to see how it would compare to cryo parts.
(I have used cryo parts and it seems to help a lot)

[pdq67]

I have read where big tunable "vibrating tables" are used to stress relieve parts to help their life.

Bolt the parts on the table and turn it on...

Probably more to it though?

pdq67

[autogear]

pdq...I think you're referring to Metal Lax or Meta Lax; by bonal and others. They even have a mobile unit you can strap onto I-beams n such

[Monza Harry]

At one shop I used to work at the boss had a set of angle plates made [in shop] and hadn't ground them until our next slow cycle, this had become my job to grind these, well he hadn't had them stress relieved prior to heat treat and they were about 0.040" out of square. So I had them sent to a shop with an "ultrasonic" stress reliever (after I brought them about 3/4 of the way home [0.008" left]) and a year later they were still within tenths of square. So I'm a believer! This was way cheaper than annealing and starting over, BTW. He didn't share numbers but the plates were back in a few hours instead of two days as an added plus. Harry

[MadBill]

After installing all new larger seat inserts in my aluminum BBC heads, they were 0.006"-0.008" warped. I had them run throughthe Meta-Lax process but didn't get around to re-checking them for a long time, however they were down to 0.002" when I did..