When grinding steel parts, the surface of the part can "burn" if too much heat is applied in a short time. Grinding burn refers to all those structural changes in edge zones of steel parts that are caused by grinding processes in steels due to the thermal energy introduced. Grinding burn can mainly occur in the form of tempering zones or new hardening zones.

The electrification movement is in full swing despite many obstacles still in play. Regardless of these challenges, machine tool providers are expanding their machine operations and tooling capabilities to meet the e-mobility demands of the future.

In conventional gear manufacturing, quality control is carried out for a number of pieces per batch. Most parts enter final gearbox assembly without any inspection. Among other things, this approach is based on two facts: measuring time is significantly longer than the machining time, and the limited measuring capacity available.

Continuous generating cylindrical gear grinding is one of the most demanding grinding applications for automotive and aerospace manufacturers. To improve gear efficiency, gear life, and noise levels, gear profile tolerances and surface finish requirements are becoming more stringent. This is especially true for EV gears, which typically require lower noise characteristics than traditional automotive gears. These new quality requirements must be maintained without sacrificing cycle time, and without inducing grinding burn.

Wind power has emerged as one of the most important sources of renewable energy in recent years. The global wind power capacity was estimated to be 837 gigawatts in 2021 (statista.com). In the United States alone, wind is the largest source of renewable electricity, providing 10.2 percent of the country’s electricity and still growing (cleanpower.org/facts/wind-power/). However, to ensure maximum power generation, the efficiency and reliability of the wind turbine are critical.

Press quenching is a tried-and-true process for the controlled hardening of flat, circular close tolerance parts. The process ensures good dimensional control and uniform hardening, thus allowing for seamless processing post heat treatment.

Quality control, EV components, energy consumption and material influences are just a handful of topics being discussed in heat treating today. New heat treat methods and global trends will be the topic of conversation later this year at Heat Treat 2023. Here’s a round-up of some stories circulating across key market segments.

It’s little wonder there’s more and more interest in the potential of lights-out or unattended production. The benefits seem immediately obvious. Staffing costs fall significantly if you can run equipment unsupervised, or with far fewer operators. Production capacity of the business greatly increases, offering the opportunity to add more customers without the expense of adding new equipment or staff.

In modern automotive vehicles, gear noise becomes more and more of an issue. The main reason is the reduced masking noise of the engine, which vanishes completely in the case of an electric driveline. Improved gear quality unfortunately does not correlate with a better noise performance in any case. High gear quality makes sure that the gear flanks are inside tight tolerances and that all teeth are nearly identical. Even if the running behavior of such gear sets shows a very low sound pressure level, the noise perception for human ears may be annoying.

The trend towards hard fine finishing of gears for automotive transmissions is accelerating. In recent years, the focus has been on increasing the efficiency of gears in order to make optimum use of the narrow gear ratio range, gear by gear, and to reduce fuel consumption. Surface finish, in particular, is under increased scrutiny since it plays such a decisive role in achieving the noise and efficiency requirements of gear units for today’s EV applications.