Technique

Surface treatment is a common and important process technology in the metal manufacturing industry. As various forms of corrosion and wear in the environment often begin on the surface, implementing surface treatment can protect the underlying material from surface corrosion and damage. Surface treatment technologies have also been developed with various material characteristics and resulted in a range of options.

Aluminum alloy is a highly active metal. An oxide film will occur as soon as the aluminum alloy contacts the air, and this can isolate the possibility of bottom layer being corroded in the environment. However, the naturally formed oxide film still will be corroded after long-term exposure, so aluminum alloy is usually anodized for surface protection. For example, we made 6061-T6 aluminum alloy casing for medical testing equipment and applied hard anodizing treatment. Hard anodizing treatment has a thicker film than ordinary anodizing treatment, which will result in a better surface hardness and corrosion resistance. Through setting up the temperature, voltage and current density, a protective coating with thickness of 25µm and hardness of HV500 will be formed on the surface, which meets the regulation of ISO10074. Among the numerous applications of aluminum alloys, lightweight, high-strength, and acidalkali resistant testing equipment required by the medical field is one of the successful projects we have supported our customers.

CATIA was developed in the 1980s by French software design company Dassault Systèmes S.A. It was originally used for aircraft manufacturing, and later expanded to other product design applications, including automobile, vessel, and other consumer goods. With technology developing, the application of CATIA has been spread to the aviation, national defense, transportation, high technology, industrial equipment, construction, and biomedical industry.

In our precision metalworking solutions, CATIA will be used in the stages of prototyping, tool development and machining processes. Before being imported into CATIA, it was programmed by engineers for machining. Before CATIA was introduced, our engineers needed to do programming for machining. However, manual programming not only takes a long time, but also has practical limitations such as curved surface programming. In order to improve design efficiency and reduce limitations, we have imported CATIA CAD/CAM, which can directly do programming through the software and converted into machining program, greatly reducing the time and limitations of manual programming.

One of our precision metalworking solutions is assembly and welding. Welding is the technique of joining metals or other materials by means of heat or pressure. Modern welding technology first appeared at the end of the 19th century, and has developed various welding methods, such as gas welding, arc welding, laser beam welding, etc. Among the metal materials that we commonly use, cast iron is known for its high elongation, and stainless steel is high temperature and corrosion resistant, which is a commonly used metal material under the modern energy-saving trend. Various metals have their own properties, and it is expected to have the hybrid positive effect on the application of products.

For example, one of our renowned Japanese clients had a special parts request for a yacht propulsion device, which uses cast iron and stainless steel in its joint structure. Here is the case study how we weld two various materials firmly and fulfill the client’s requirements in the actual application.