When you’re going to make a part for a customer, you usually just look at the drawing and order the custom machined parts from your supplier. Then it shows up on your dock and you can start making chips. But sometimes it’s not that easy. Sometimes, for performance or machinability, you need to source a high-purity version of an alloy or a precision form of the material. Sometimes, a customer may specify a material that is out of stock everywhere, with a 40-week lead time, or maybe the mills just don’t make that particular alloy anymore. Occasionally, perhaps for a brand new application or for a super-high-performance part, none of the available materials will do the job. Your customer may work with a company that specializes in custom alloys to develop a new alloy to meet the requirements of the application.
Unique alloys
Sophisticated Alloys, Butler, Pa., has melted just about every imaginable kind of alloy, from ordinary ones that happen to be unavailable from stock, to specialized magnetic alloys used in computer disc drives, to reactive solders, to high-temperature materials used for coating jet engine components. Company president Jim Patterson said once he even worked with a cinematic special-effects expert to provide a metal that was liquid at room temperature for a particular movie. Orders usually range from a few pounds to a few hundred pounds, said Patterson, though sometimes a client wants only a few grams for research purposes. “We’re a place of first choice for some people, or of last resort [or others],” he said. Starting with high-purity raw materials, Sophisticated Alloys prepares alloys in one of five vacuum induction melters, the largest of which has a capacity of 400 to 500 pounds. “What we do is make any type of alloy you can think of. We don’t stock any materials except raw materials,” said Patterson. One of Sophisticated Alloys’ specialties is sputtering targets. Sputtering is a type of physical vapor deposition process that lays down a very thin layer of a material on a part or substrate. In sputtering, a cathode, or “target” made from the desired coating material is bombarded with ions. This causes atoms or molecules to come off of the target, and then attach themselves to the part being coated. Sputtering is used to place the metalized layer on compact discs, add anti-reflection coatings to optics, deposit thin layers of material during semiconductor fabrication, and in manufacturing many other products.
Designed to order
A custom-alloys house works with clients to develop materials that have the properties needed for specific applications. “We know the addition of different precision machined parts can do different things,” said Susan M. Abkowitz, vice president, technology and operations, Dynamet Technology, Inc, Burlington, Mass. Dynamet Technology specializes in titanium alloys produced from powdered metal. A client might say, “We like titanium, but would like it to be stronger at higher temperatures.” Another might want better wear resistance or higher stiffness. In some medical applications, the desired quality is lower modulus of elasticity so the titanium alloy will more closely match the mechanical properties of bone. Dynamet Technology’s process produces full-density, near-net-shape parts from powdered metal mixtures through a process of cold isostatic pressing, sintering and then hot isostatic pressing. Working with powders allows the creation of novel materials, Abkowitz said, some of which could not be made by melting methods. In addition to near-net-shape parts, the company also can provide material in bars or other forms.
www.machineparts-cx.com, established in July 1996, has acquired the certificate ISO9001:2008 in 2007, now is a professional manufacturer engaging in designing and producing all kinds of blades used in terminal riveting machines, wire cutting and stripping machines, all kinds of moulds, jigs&fixtures, and automation precision machined components. After seventeen years of experience accumulation and technology R&D, the blades we made by unique technology and selected materials enjoy a long lifetime , which are favored by our customers.
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