Carbide blade life doubled when sawing titanium

Citation

(1999), "Carbide blade life doubled when sawing titanium", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 71 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.1999.12771aab.012

Carbide blade life doubled when sawing titanium

Carbide blade life doubled when sawing titanium

Keywords Rivers Machinery, Timet, Titanium

The UK division of titanium producer, American owned Timet, has replaced two bandsaws at its Birmingham forge plant with one Kasto HBA 860/1060 AU computer-controlled, automatic bandsaw from UK agent, Rivers Machinery (Plate 7).

Timet's operations and technical team viewed and evaluated a number of different saws. In its opinion, the Kasto machine with its 17 tonne installed weight and three tonne bow is better engineered than others currently available on the market. Its rigid construction allows the company to double the amount of titanium cut with every tungsten carbide tipped (TCT) blade.

Plate 7 Close-up from the output side of the saw showing a 780mm diameter 318-grade titanium ingot on the 13 metre table

Hitherto, between 7,000 and 10,000in.² of titanium, mainly "diameter billet" and "bloom" in the as-forged condition, were sawn with each blade before it dulled. This was equivalent to one week's work. Now a blade lasts on average for two weeks working at the same pace.

Cutting part-forged blooms is an exacting job. They weigh several tonnes each and as they are bowed, the ends tend to fall under gravity when the metal is sawn through, pinching and damaging the expensive blades. In addition, they have internal stresses as well as a hard crust, typically of 400HV (hardness Vickers).

To satisfy itself that the Kasto was the right machine for the job, the Timet team took a six tonne, 20in² bloom of 6AL-4V (aluminium/ vanadium) titanium alloy to the factory in Germany for cutting trials. The bandsaw is said to have coped admirably well. In particular, the large gripping vices at the front and the back had more than enough pressure to stop the sections falling away on completion of the cut.

Since April this year (1998) when it was installed at the Birmingham plant, the machine has been working around the clock, seven days a week. Although standard Kasto bandsaws are capable of cutting with TCT blades for extended periods, Timet's machine is of "carbide specification" as TCT is exclusively used for sawing as-forged products.

Higher speed and power as well as increased rigidity to withstand the additional stresses of carbide sawing are the hallmarks of these machines. Modifications include the provision of a larger drive motor (10kW) to provide increased torque and speeds up to 190m/min; especially robust, high efficiency spur gears; band guides designed specifically for carbide blades; adjustment of band speed on the operator's panel for easy optimisation of this critical parameter; and separate feed control for the beginning and continuation of a cut.

Further details are available from Rivers Machinery Ltd. Tel: +44 (0) 1962 860371; Fax: +44 (0) 1962 841095.