- 21 December 2024
Metalworking is a technological process that changes the size, shape and other characteristics of metal products. Various types of machining are used - casting, machining, electrical and heat treatment, welding.
Casting is the process of making an alloy by pouring molten metal into molds. Once solidified, the molten metal takes on the configuration of the inner space of the mold. Modern types of metalworking provide the ability to produce castings of complex shapes with minimal waste. There are various techniques of metal processing by casting:
- In sand molds. This is the most common and cheapest casting technology, allowing the production of raw semi-finished products. Holes and cavities are formed using rods placed in a casting mold.
- In a cooling mold - a folding mold, usually metal. This technique allows us to obtain high-quality semi-finished products. The hardened product is removed from the mold.
- Treatment of metals under pressure in molds. This method is mainly used for non-ferrous alloys and some steels.
- According to models. This metal processing makes it possible to produce products with complex shapes. To do this, a very precise model of the part is made from stearin and other material, and then a slurry is applied to it to form a shell. The dried and fired shell mold is filled with molten metal.
Metalworking includes processes that cause changes in the geometric properties of a product. It can be divided into two main categories. The first group, called pressure machining, includes metalworking techniques that occur without removing the top layer of metal. These include rolling, forging, stamping and pressing. The second group are technological operations called cutting. These include turning, milling, planing, chiseling and drilling. Here, metalworking tools are necessary.
This method of machining is used in the production of sheet metal, pipes, sections and shaped products. Hot-rolled semi-finished products can serve as the starting material for various cold deformation methods. In cold rolling, the goal is to increase dimensional accuracy, improve surface quality and other characteristics of hot-rolled semi-finished products.
In this case, metalworking tools have been known for hundreds of years. Cold stamping has long been the main method of producing metal utensils due to the simple nature of the process and low cost. Stamping can be sheet or volumetric. Volumetric stamping results in a spatial change in the volumetric shape of the workpiece. Typically, the purpose of such a technological operation is to obtain a product with a more complex configuration from a workpiece with a simple shape (sphere, cylinder, parallelogram, cube). Sheet metal stamping is a type of metalworking that is used to produce both small parts and bodies of various types of transportation equipment.
This is done after heating the workpiece. It can be manual (this method is currently used mainly to create artistic products) and mechanized.
It involves processing objects by extruding them through one or more channels. Soft non-ferrous metals (aluminum, copper) and alloys based on them are usually pressed without heating. Hot pressing is usually used for semi-finished steel parts. Extrusion is a modern method of metal processing that makes it possible to produce products with long profiles.
Very often, several MMD technologies are combined and/or MMD is combined with other types of metal processing to achieve the desired effect.
Cutting is a set of processes that involves cutting away layers of metal and reshaping them or dividing parts into pieces. Semi-finished products are: castings, all kinds of rolled products, stamped, forged, pressed parts. Basic methods of cutting metal:
- Turning. It is carried out on lathes using milling machines. Turning makes it possible to create conical, cylindrical and shaped parts.
- Drilling. Additional operations that can be combined with drilling are boring, reaming, reaming, countersinking. Their purpose is to obtain holes of the required diameter and depth - through or blind. The equipment used is various types of drilling machines and lathes.
- Milling. These are performed on milling machines using disc, cylindrical, face, face and corner milling cutters.
