Dry Machining Tool Design via Chlorine Ion Implantation

Dry machining has become a key issue to significantly reduce the wastes of used lubricants and cleaning agents and to improve the environmental consciousness for medical and food applications of special tooling. Since the tools and metallic works are in direct contact in dry, severe adhesive wear and oxidation are thought to occur even at the presence of hard protective coatings. Self-lubrication mechanism with use of lubricous oxide films is found to be effective for dry machining. Through the chlorine ion implantation to tools, titanium base oxides are in-situ formed on the tool surface. This oxide deforms elasto-plastically so that both friction coefficient and wear volume are reduced even in the high-speed cutting.

Solid State Synthesis and Thermoelectric Properties of Mg-Si-Ge System

Thermoelectric materials, Mg2Si1-xGex （x=0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1）, have been prepared by bulk mechanical alloying （BMA） and hot pressing （HP）. The electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient and thermal conductivity were measured from room temperature up to about 700 K. The electrical conductivity of all the samples increases with increasing temperature, while the Seebeck coefficient and thermal conductivity decrease with increasing temperature. Mg2Si and Mg2Si0.8Ge0.2 possess negative type of conductivity, while for other compounds it is positive. At the same time, the effect of hot processing condition on thermoelectric properties was also investigated. The maximum figure of merit of Mg2Si0.6Ge0.4 was obtained with the processing parameter of BMA at 600 cycles and hot pressing at 773 K and i GPa for i h.

Thermoelectric Properties of Mg_2Si_(1-x)Sn_x Synthesized by Bulk Mechanical Alloying

Bulk mechanical alloying （BMA） has been successfully applied to solid-state synthesis of p-type and n-type thermoelectric materials Mg2Si1-xSnx （x = 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1） from element-powders at the room temperature in a relatively short time. The electrical conductivity, the Seebeck coefficient and the thermal conductivity of the Mg2Si1-xSnx are quite sensitive to the x-content. With the x-content rising, the electrical conductivity increases. When x = 0.6, it reaches the lowest and Mg2Si shows an n-type of semi-conducting However, when x = 0.2 and T 〉525 K, the Seebeck coefficient of the samples will change the opposite way. While x≥0.4, the samples present a p-type of semi-conducting. The figure of merit, Z of Mg2Si1-xSnx will be obtained in the range from 300 K to 700 K. When x = 0.6, Z proves to be higher than that of other samples at 300 K≤ T≤650 K.

Precipitate-Accommodated Plasma Nitriding for Aluminum Alloys

Reliable surface treatment has been explored to improve the strength and wear resistance of aluminum alloy parts in automotives. Long duration time as well as long pre-sputtering time are required for plasma nitriding of aluminum or its alloys only with the thickness of a few micrometers. New plasma inner nitriding is proposed to realize the fast-rate nitriding of aluminum alloys. Al-6Cu alloy is employed as a targeting material in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of this plasma nitriding. Mechanism of fast-rate nitriding process is discussed with consideration of the role of Al2Cu precipitates.

High Density Plasma Nitriding of Al-Cu Alloys for Automotive Parts

Duralumin alloys have been utilized as structural components and parts for aircrafts, train-cars and so forth. Their high specific strength was attractive to those applications; however, their little corrosion resistance and low wear endurance became a fatal demerit in practical applications. In order to overcome these issues of high strength aluminum alloys, high density plasma nitriding is proposed as an effective surface treatment for duralumin. This process has a capability to control the RF- and DC-plasmas independently for nitriding. This enables us to temporally control and describe the plasma state by in-situ plasma diagnosis. This plasma diagnosis was instrumented to search for optimum processing condition to plasma nitriding the duralumin alloys of type A2011. Both type A2011 aluminum alloy plates and pipes were employed to describe the inner nitriding behavior for hardening the duralumin alloys by the present plasma nitriding.

Plasma Nitriding-Assisted Printing of Stainless Steel Punches for Micro-piercing Process

MEMS （micro-electric-mechanical-system） required for miniature, thin mechanical parts as a structural member; e.g., the miniature pumping system consisted of ten to twelve thin metallic plates before joining. At present, those thin shaped sheets were fabricated by the chemical etching. Their geometric inaccuracy as well as long leading time often became an engineering issue. Micro-piercing process was expected to make mass production of thin sheet products with complex and accurate geometry for much shorter leading time once the die for this micro-piercing was built in. In the present paper, a new plasma nitriding-assisted printing was proposed as an automatic production line to fabricate the micro-piercing punch. After preparation of CAD-data of the punch head, its two dimensional geometry was ink-jet printed directly on the AISI420 stainless steel die-substrate. The unprinted surface area was only plasma nitrided at 693 K for 14.4 ks to transform this two dimensional micro-pattern to the three dimensional hardness distribution in the AISI420 substrate. Through the mechanical removal of ink-jet printed area, the flat punch head with sharp edge comers was fabricated in much shorter duration time than the end-milling. SEM-EDX, surface profiling measurement as well as micro-hardness testing were employed to describe each step in the above plasma printing. The thin MEMS stainless steel part with a micro-pendulum as well as three S-letter shaped springs was taken for an example to describe this automatic production procedure of plasma printing from the CAD data mining to the micro-piercing punch finishing.