Material composition testing .

[Mike@Lustre]

What testing procedures do most shops typically do to insure the material matches the heat code and material composition ??

 

Typically we run 303/304 SS for our products , but every once in a while we get a bad batch  that destroys tooling and causes issues , yesterday was one of those incidents .

 

Anyone ever use one of those hand held units that fire a laser and then analyze the fumes to determine the material composition ??

[Guest]

Get certs from your vendor

[Colin Gilchrist]

What testing procedures do most shops typically do to insure the material matches the heat code and material composition ??

 

Typically we run 303/304 SS for our products , but every once in a while we get a bad batch  that destroys tooling and causes issues , yesterday was one of those incidents .

 

Anyone ever use one of those hand held units that fire a laser and then analyze the fumes to determine the material composition ??

 

I'm will John on this one, but I'm also curious to know about these portable hand-held units. Sounds pretty cool. Got any info?

[FROZEN]

We are currently have troubles with 7075. Breaking drills on a job that has ran for 8 years. Vendor says it is to spec???? Had to slow down to 1018 surface foot???

[Mike@Lustre]

We get material certs with every job , still does not prove that the material is what they say it is , that is a issue . We purchase 8 to 10,000 of material at a time and sometimes but the whole mill run depending on the size .

[MrFish]

We work as a sub contractor to a medical instrument company and machine a lot of 17-4ph stainless for them. Two batches ago they supplied us some material for a job that we have been running for the last couple of years and we saw awful tool life and rigidity issues. We complained about the material and were told and shown certs to say the material was correct. After costly cutter wear and slowing the feeds by 30% we decided to get the material tested. It was done by a local university and came back as being in spec but certain alloying elements were high and others low in comparison to some "good" material we had. Basically all added up to the material being 30% tougher in tensile strength !!

[Mike@Lustre]

We work as a sub contractor to a medical instrument company and machine a lot of 17-4ph stainless for them. Two batches ago they supplied us some material for a job that we have been running for the last couple of years and we saw awful tool life and rigidity issues. We complained about the material and were told and shown certs to say the material was correct. After costly cutter wear and slowing the feeds by 30% we decided to get the material tested. It was done by a local university and came back as being in spec but certain alloying elements were high and others low in comparison to some "good" material we had. Basically all added up to the material being 30% tougher in tensile strength !!

 

 

Sounds similar to our material issues , we sent a few samples out to be tested just waiting the results .

 

We had 2 lathes running a 50% feed and speed to burn thru the material .

 

And I feel the material is not harder just tougher as it really only causes a issue on the drilling cycle , that was the red flag when the drill started the hole and alarmed out the "Z" axis for torque overload .

 

At 1st we thought it was the machine , but when the 2nd lathe had the same issue we discovered the material was not the spec as the other material currently being run .