Feed Shoe Material

[sunthorn]

I work in a company that produces a product that is used by the the military. The process is very much like powdered metal pressing. Instead of metal powder we are pressing very reactive mixtures of powders to make a solid material. The problem is that our feed shoes are experencing extreme amounts of wear. We have tried several types of plastics (UHMV, Poly). One other problem is foreign objects, shoe material and organic material in our pressed item causes very noticable effects on performance, so in Xray inspection we have a reject products with FO.

My next shoe material is going to be anodize aluminum. Any other sugestions to a shoe bottom that i should try?I am also looking to get input on changing out our current automatic feed shoe design.

 

[ornerynorsk]

Are we talking propellants, or just what kind of "reactive" materials is it? Static electricity/conductivity concerns? Any more info that you would be allowed to share?

 

[sunthorn]

Yes, Its its a combination of all three. One componet of the disk is a propellant/heat source, static electricity can and has ignited them in the pressing and final manufacturing process. Another is extremely reactive to moisture and will ignite when in contact with liquid water and other materials are hydroscopic or will oxidize within 10 min. in a normal room enviroment.


Other factors to consider is that all the pressing and manufacturing takes place in a dry room kept at 50 degees F and less than 0.3% relative humidity. We are replacing the shoe material once every 3-4 days which is about 2600 cycles of the shoe going through its motion. How does this compare to other feed shoe maintanence/replacement in the powdered metal industries?

 

[MadMango]

Isn't aluminum powder explosive? If your feed shoes are being worn, maybe you want to stay away from aluminum. Have you looked into nylon 6?

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[CdotS]

It is not possible to do a diagnosis without knowing all the details of the affected surface. I have seen people describing wear when they actually mean corrosion or high temperature oxidation. For them, the term wear means any surface degradation.

It is difficult (often wrong) to offer solutions without understanding the cause of the problem. I would recommend a systematic failure analysis before selecting a suitable material or material-coating system.