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in Vol. 24 - January Issue - Year 2023
The "Nemesis" Of Ultra-Precision Parts Fatigue Destruction - Tungsten Microsphere Particle Peening Technology In New Era
Gong Taimin, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, is responsible for the application technology development and market cooperation of Shenzhen Aerospace Science Advanced Material Co., Ltd.
Figure 1: The solid spherical tungsten alloy powder
Figure 2: Tungsten gold pellets with different particle size
Figure 3: Steel pellets
Figure 4: Zirconia ceramic pellets
Fig. 5: Morphology of tungsten microsphere particle after 3000 rounds of recycling
Figure 6: Harmonic gears before and after tungsten microsphere particle peening
Fig.7. Micromorphology of harmonic gear tooth roots after tungsten microsphere particle peening
MFN was able to get an interview with Gong Taimin, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer in Shenzhen Aerospace Science Advanced Material Co., Ltd.
(?) MFN: Dr. Gong, please introduce your company?
(!) G. T.: Okay, Shenzhen Aerospace Science Advanced Material Co., Ltd. is an innovative technology company in the field of spherical powder materials, founded by Dr. Xu Hui in October 2019. Over these years, Dr. Xu led the team to develop a low-cost technology to produce high-quality micro-spherical metal powders, named Arc Plasma Micro-Blasting technology, which is unique with green production and mass production. This technology is 100% independently developed and uniquely patented, including technical principles, equipment and manufacturing process.
(?) MFN: What powders can Shenzhen Aerospace Science Advanced Material Co., Ltd. supply? What are the advantages?
(!) G. T.: Any material conducting electricity that can be manufactured into a fine spherical powder by Arc Plasma Micro-Blasting technology. In the field of refractory metals, our product has great cost advantages, and has the advantages of high sphericity and good fluidity. Figure 1 shows the solid spherical tungsten alloy powder produced by the company.
(?) MFN: Dr. Gong, just now, talking about spherical tungsten alloy powder, what are the applications?
(!) G. T.: In addition to the application in additive manufacturing and hard surface coating, we also found an excellent application for this powder material, that is, for the field of microspheres particle peening, using spherical tungsten alloy powder as a projectile, the microspheres particle peening strengthens the surface of ultra-precision parts to improve the fatigue service life of parts, and for this reason, we have redefined this technology and called it the ‘nemesis’ of ultra-precision parts fatigue destruction. At present, our company has developed these materials with different particle size ranges from coarse to fine, and customers can choose the corresponding specifications in the range of 10 microns to 300 microns (Figure 2).
(?) MFN: Why is it called tungsten microsphere particle peening technology in the new era? What is the advantage compared with traditional materials?
(!) G. T.: That's a good question; we named it ‘Tungsten microspheres particle peening technology in the new era’, which is to distinguish it from the traditional technology. The reason is that the key to peening technology is the characteristics of the microsphere particle, and our product is unique, where its characteristics are completely different from those of the traditional microsphere.
At present, the commonly used materials are mainly imported metal steel pellets (Figure 3), zirconia ceramic pellets (Figure 4) and glass pellets. The tungsten microsphere particle has the advantages of high density (>14 g/mm3), high hardness (>HV1400), high sphericality (>95%) and strong toughness compared with steel pellets. The tungsten gold pellets have the advantages of strong impact resistance, long service life and low cost, compared with zirconia ceramic pellets and glass pellets.
Figure 5 illustrates the morphology of tungsten microsphere particle after 3000 times of recycling, and it can be found from the figure that the microsphere particle is not broken. Although there is a small amount of wear, most of this is oval in shape and can still be used normally. It shows that our tungsten microsphere particle has a very long service life and greatly reduces the cost for customers.
(?) MFN: What are the successful cases of tungsten gold microsphere shot peening technology in the new era?
(!) G. T.: At present, the company mainly focuses on the tungsten microsphere particle peening technology on precision transmission parts such as harmonic gears, which are strengthened by tungsten microsphere particle peening (Figure 6), and being under the premise of deformation less than 10 μm, it can achieve 100% coverage (Figure 7), the surface roughness Ra is 0.70μm, and the surface residual compressive stress reaches -860 MPa, which is greatly improved compared with the traditional peening.
(?) MFN: What are the other fields tungsten microsphere particle peening technology can be applied to?
(!) G. T.: In addition to ultra-precision transmission parts like gears, bearings, pistons, blades, etc., the tungsten microsphere particle peening technology can also be applied to precision hydraulic and pneumatic parts, cold stamping dies, hot work dies, precision CNC tools, high grade tools and other fields, which greatly improves service life and creates great value for customers.
MFN would like to thank Gong Taimin for this interview!
For Information: Shenzhen Aerospace Science Advanced Material Co., Ltd
15th floor, Building A5, Nanshan Zhiyuan, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China
E-mail: 15084829489@163.com
