FormaMet bronze alloy provides an alternative for roll form product manufacturers
If you’ve ever shaved in a rush, you know the feeling of discovering, later in the day, those rogue hairs that were missed that keep your skin from feeling smooth. A poorly cast bronze alloy is no different. The alloy’s grain structure can be uneven, leading to inconsistent wearing of mating surfaces. And in roll forming, this can cause headaches to the weary job shop owner who can’t afford to scrap defective materials and is tired of replacing machine components.
Creating a uniform, fine-grained bronze isn’t easy, as cast bronzes are traditionally known to be relatively soft and porous, but Brush Wellman Inc., Cleveland, has done just that with its innovative EquaCast process. The result of this process, the FormaMet alloy, is an aluminum bronze alloy that Brush Wellman hopes will change industry mindsets on what bronze can do in roll forming manufacturing.
"[Roll forming manufacturers] still want the hardest thing they can find that doesn’t wear out," says Barbara Munderloh, marketing manager for industrial applications at Brush Wellman. She notes that the advantage Brush Wellman has is, being a speciality-engineered products mill, it can make high-end materials thanks to its advanced manufacturing technology.
"What we offer is a patented engineering casting process called EquaCast that allows us to create a homogenous and fine-grain structure," she says.
New lessons
With its FormaMet alloy less prone to breakouts and providing overall enhanced machinability, Brush Wellman has extended its reputation as being on the forefront of high-performance alloys. In existence in some regard since the 1880s when Charles F. Brush founded Brush Electric Co., Brush Wellman knows the value of adapting to the times and being open to new ideas, such as using a hard bronze for roll forming applications.
To Munderloh, innovation is just part of the job, as is backing up Brush Wellman’s products with a cutting-edge chemical metallurgical lab.
"[With FormaMet], we’re able to provide a consistent, supported product," says Munderloh. "We’re able to check our melts in the furnace consistently, we know exactly what that chemistry is, we know exactly what’s coming out the door has been tested, and we stand behind it. That’s a great comfort to people who know the frustrations of dealing with porosity issues. It’s fabulous that we can provide this material to an industry that needs it."
Along with roll forming applications, FormaMet has other uses in industrial tooling such as deep drawing, with the same promise of improving part longevity and reducing wear on mating materials. And in those markets, as in the roll forming world, Brush Wellman finds itself playing the part of educator to a skeptical potential customer base--a role it knows well.
"We’re happy to educate people on something that’s different out there," says Munderloh. "No one immediately believes that there can be anything new in bronzes. We also have a revolutionary bearing material called ToughMet--we’re always trying to get the word out. Our technical service center works with customers on design assistance, failure analysis and educational programming. We have a staff of metallurgists, mechanical engineers and application engineers ready to help."
Ahead of the class
One of the first customers open to the idea of FormaMet and to benefit from using its roll forming products was Roll-Kraft, Mentor, Ohio, a designer and manufacturer of roll tooling equipment for tube, pipe and roll forming producers. Roll-Kraft was introduced to the FormaMet alloy via Schmolz + Bickenbach USA, Carol Stream, Ill., a global market leader in the production and distribution of specialty steels. But before investigating the potential benefits of the alloy, Roll-Kraft consulted its customers.
"When a new material hits the market that we think would work well with specific customers, I think we do a good job of communicating the new material to these customers," says Bret Molnar, roll design engineer for Roll-Kraft. "If they think it might be a good fit, we set up research and development to get the ball rolling.
"So far, the feedback from the customers has been very favorable," he continues. "The added life they’ve received over [our previous forming material] is between 10 percent and 60 percent, depending on the applications. Some [material tests] have been on regular 300 series stainless and some on titanium, so it has had a decent testing. We had one trial in the weld area, and that was the 10 percent increase. The fin pass trials resulted in the 60 percent increase."
Available in standard rounds between 40 mm and 300 mm and as long as 3 m, in standard plates between 30 mm and 150 mm thick, up to 800 mm wide and up to 2,550 mm long, as well as in a variety of custom shapes and sizes, FormaMet is designed to easily insert into a company’s product design. Because of this flexibility, along with extended roll life, Roll-Kraft’s customers are experiencing welcomed reductions on other fronts.
"The FormaMet material has allowed our customers to run longer between tooling changes so they have less downtime on the machines," says Molnar. "The quality [of products] they produce isn’t affected, but the scrap rates are reduced due to less downtime to change tooling."
Although FormaMet isn’t the first hard bronze on the market, Brush Wellman has gone to great lengths to ensure that the service and supply chain experience involved with the alloy is as smooth and consistent as the alloy’s surface. Schmolz + Bickenbach, a long-time trusted supplier of die materials to the roll tooling industry, added FormaMet to complement its existing cold work tool steel product portfolio.
"There’s already a competitive bronze on the market that’s been used for years," says Munderloh, adding that customers seemed to have become complacent with inconsistent materials, often having to get multiple quotes from multiple houses and never quite knowing what they’re getting.
"Sometimes [the alloy] is even cast differently," she says. "It could be continuously cast, centrifugally cast, and sometimes the plates are sand-casted. Sometimes there’s porosity, sometimes the prices are all over the board. What I’m hearing from a lot of those end customers is that the material is inconsistent and that the sales process is inconsistent. By providing consistent material and a consistent experience along the supply chain, we give customers the value they’re looking for in today’s market." FFJ
