According to the jury, the submitted project makes exemplary use of uses exemplary the high innovation potential and the great variety of applications of steel. The German "Wirtschaftsvereinigung Stahl" thanked EMA Indutec for their participation in the competition and expressed their appreciation.
Fixture hardening is a heat treatment process in which workpieces are surface-hardened and calibrated at the same time. This process is used especially in the automotive industry for the production of case-hardened components with high reproducible dimensional accuracy such as geared workpieces. The aim is to obtain almost ready-to-install components without further post-processing. However, tensions due to pre-processes and temperature influences during the process chain, which usually consists of carburizing, hardening, washing and tempering, can lead to undesirable distortion. The result is increased post-processing effort and in extreme cases the uselessness of the component.
EMA Indutec has developed a new system that combines all heat-treatment processes in one machine apart from carburizing. To reduce surface oxidation it can be equipped with a closed inert gas housing. The previously required washing of the components is eliminated since the quenching takes place with an aqueous polymer solution. Four independently controllable quenching circuits offer a maximum flexibility for quenching and allow initial workpiece shape corrections only through different start times of the showers.
The new system is one of the first stand-alone machines worldwide that heats workpieces by induction, hardens between fixtures, calibrates on a mandrel and reheats for de-shrinking for removing the workpieces smoothly from the mandrel without wear. The process thereby improves the dimensional accuracy of the components and offers many economic advantages to suppliers and vehicle manufacturers through direct integration into the production lines.
_{(Source: EMA Indutec GmbH)}