WPI Team to Work on ATP Award on Innovative Quenching (June 2002)
INNOVATIVE QUENCHING METHOD FOR RAPID HEAT TREATMENT SECURES ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM AWARD FOR TECHNOMICS, LLC
Technomics, LLC, Plymouth, MN, has received a $2,000,000 award from the Advanced Technology Program, National Institute of Technology and Standards, to develop and validate its patented process for quenching aluminum alloy components via a fluidized bed. Technomics has previously received funds from the US Department of Energy to test and demonstrate the heat treatment phase of its automated in-line system for heat-treating, quenching, and aging components.
Preliminary tests indicate that the Technomics system will reduce the time required for the total heat treatment, quenching, and aging cycle to less than one hour. It will also enable integration of the cycle into continuous manufacturing, eliminating the disruption caused by batch processing.
The quenching process offers substantial further benefits for manufacturers, as Technomics believes it will significantly reduce, or even eliminate, the residual stress and distortion that occurs in present quenching methods. The use of dry fluidized media stops the formation of vapor barriers, which are the primary cause of stress and distortion. AMCAST Corporation, the industrial test site for this ATP project, believes this approach may also reduce component costs by as much as 25%, while substantially improving quality.
With the ATP award, Technomics will first undertake, in a scale model of the quench bed, extensive testing, controlling for all variables except the quenching method, with first, test plates cast in three separate aluminum alloys (354, A356, and 357). The test plates will then undergo quench factor, X-ray diffraction, and finite element analysis to identify the sets of variable that produce optimum properties. A control group of plates will be conventionally quenched.
Next, the ATP team will build a full-scale system at an AMCAST casting facility and perform the same series of tests on actual automobile components, including wheels, suspension arms, and suspension knuckles. Components will move from the casting area into the heat treatment fluidized bed and then into the quenching bed via an automated overhead transfer system, eliminating batching and reducing required labor. Again, a control group of components will be processed by traditional methods.
The full team for testing and validating this promising new approach to quenching includes Diran Apelian, Sc.D., Director of the Center for Heat Treating Excellence, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, Makhlouf M. Makhlouf, Ph.D., Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Rathindra DasGupta, Chief Scientist for the Contech Division of SPX Corporation, Muskegon, MI, who will support Chuck Bergman, Vice President, Technomics, and James Van Wert, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer, AMCAST Corporation.
NIST’s Advanced Technology Program, a unit of the US Department of Commerce, enables companies to pursue innovative technologies of significant potential national economic benefit that are still considered high technical risks and, thus, are usually unable to obtain private financing.
For further information on Technomics rapid heat treatment system and use of fluidized beds, contact Chuck Bergman, Vice President, Technomics, LLC, 17200 Medina Rd, Suite 600, Plymouth, MN 55447. (763) 383-4720, ext. 11 Email: cbergman@rapidheattreatment.com.
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