Saturday, February 6, 2010

Working With Various Types of Alloys

Lately my husband has been very busy at work, (he works so hard). A couple weeks ago a customer brought in a long shaft from a yarder, a machine that pulls logs up the side of the mountain, that he had broke in half, so of course he had to build them a new one. It was very difficult for him due to the complexity of it, and the mental part of making sure he did not mess it up. The hardest part for him was drilling a hole down the center of the shaft 50" deep that had to line up with a cross hole at the end. The shaft was made out of an alloy steel called 4140 QT, which though it made drilling this hole much more difficult for him, due to the toughness of the material, will provide the customer with a much better shaft in the end that will be more resistant to breaking again.
Since they are so busy he is going to go to work tomorrow and try to get caught up a little. He will be working on a saw arbor that is used to hold saw blades on a machine that cuts logs by following the structure of the log to produce a straighter board. This arbor is first rough machined, then sent out to have a special spline put on the outside that is used to drive the saw blades, then it is induction hardened and straightened. Once that is done my husband gets it back and finishes the ends of the shaft. When the shaft is finally done it needs to be very straight, as it turns very fast, so a special material called 52100 is used to make it out of. This material is slighty tougher than 4140 but is very resilient to moving during and after the machining process, which helps it stay much straighter in the end. Overall helping the customer to have a better running machine.
After he is done with that, and if he has time, he is going to start making some parts for a paper mill that are used to churn pulp. These parts are made out of 316 stainless steel and resemble a flat bladed propeller. Again this will be a difficult job for him as it is something he has never done before and having to work with stainless will make it much more difficult. Although these parts are used in a very wet environment and must be made from stainless steel. He is looking forward to it though as it will be something new for him.

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