Manufacturing Technology

Metal heat treatment specialist, Wallwork Group, has opened a new GB£130,000 in-house testing facility for the mechanical testing of heat treated components, certified by UKAS, at its Cambridge, UK, plant.

Andy Fox, operations director at Wallwork Cambridge, explains: “Destructive testing is mainly specified by customers in aerospace, however, it is becoming increasingly common in motorsport, medical devices and other industries where there can be no compromise in product integrity. The new facility gives us much quicker results than going out to an external testing lab.”

Adding to hardness and shadowgraph, is the new Z100 testing rig from ZwickRoell. This gives Wallwork the capability to run tensile, compression and hardness tests on materials and components prior to and post heat treatment. This helps the company quickly identify any material or processing issues that could impact quality. It also helps provide data to refine existing metal heat treatment processes, component design and more.

Confirming that correct heat treatment has been performed on components is especially important within aerospace, where accurate results contribute to risk-based usage of materials. Wallwork also operates vacuum brazing units at its Manchester and Cambridge sites. These work to many aerospace prime approvals and the new Z100 has the potential to confirm joint strength between vacuum brazed materials. Metal heat treatment is also performed at two other plants in Birmingham and Newcastle.

“Faster turnaround of testing results is necessary for us to meet customer manufacturing targets and it also makes the internal management of important accreditations much easier. From operating our own commercial pick up/delivery fleet to product testing, we are always seeking ways to improve both the quality and the speed of service to customers. We are now looking at adding in-house impact and flat tensile testing as part of our continual development process,” Andy concluded.