Rolled metal electron plasma treatment for automotive hardware cold upsetting

Abstract

One of the most important objectives of the modern car production development is to improve the quality of metal products and parts made from it, increase their efficiency, reliability, service life, bringing these indicators to the level of the world standards, ensuring the competitiveness of domestic products at the foreign market. The structural safety of motor vehicles is largely determined by the operational reliability of the constituent elements. Car fasteners made of high-carbon and alloy wire, including hardware items, are among the critical and widely used parts in mechanical engineering. The most common and progressive method of their manufacture is the cold upsetting from rolled bar material. The bar material surface condition has a significant impact on its quality. Hot rolled products from metallurgical plants are typically delivered to the processing facilities covered with scale and rust. To improve the surface quality of semifinished metallurgical products for rerolling at the stage of wire preparation for drawing, it is subjected to continuous mechanical or chemical cleaning. Traditionally, the technology of surface scale removing by etching is used in production. This method of scale removal provides a high level of cleaning, but there are problems with the disposal of spent acid solutions, reducing the steel ductility. Mechanical methods of scale removal have been widely introduced recently, although the use of mechanical scale removal devices also does not completely solve the problem. The paper considers the possibility of using advanced electron plasma treatment technologies for these purposes and the influence of traditional methods and this scale removing method from the rolled steel surface on the quality of metal preparation for upsetting.