Hydraulic component manufacturers such as Axiom Hydraulics are constantly challenged by their customers’ requirements to continually optimise parts production. Through acting as a distributor for world-leading materials manufacturer, Dura-Bar, Axiom Hydraulics can now deliver superior performance and significant cost savings to its customers.
Dura-Bar is the largest producer of 5 to 66 cm diameter iron bar in the world. The company is unique in the industry in creating the iron bar stock in a horizontal, continuous casting process without utilising any sand. This represents a completely different process to traditional iron sand castings.
Axiom Hydraulics will sell the raw Dura-Bar product and also machine it into enhanced, finished components, providing a growing market for Dura-Bar and its associated components throughout South Africa.
Dura-Bar’s continuous casting process begins with a water-cooled graphite die that is machined to form the shape of the bar. The die is mounted on a bar machine crucible and as the bar is pulled horizontally from the crucible, the head pressure feeds molten iron into the die, producing a fine-grained cast iron bar. Since the bar is being pulled from the bottom of the holding crucible, impurities float to the top, away from the opening of the die. These impurities are then removed from the crucible to allow clean iron to flow into the die. As the molten iron flows through the water-cooled graphite die, it is solidified on the outside diameter and continuously pulled on support rollers down the bar line as it continues to self-cool. Once the bar has cooled to a safe temperature, a notching saw is used to make a cut into the bar’s thickness and is then held down and completely broken off at the notch. This allows the bar to fall into the bar line receptacle and for the process to continue within seconds. A single bar line is run in the continuous casting process for an average of 10 hours straight.
Dura-Bar regional sales manager, Tyler Towns explained: “Dura-Bar improves performance through the material itself and through our casting process. We have a consistent fine-grained microstructure on all grades of material that is a result of the heavy head pressure on the bottom of the holding crucible where we pull the bar from to cast. This offers fast and smooth machinability for our customers. Dura-Bar also contains just the right amount of graphite inside the material to provide natural lubricity that extends tool life far beyond traditional sand castings or steel grades.”
Dura-Bar outperforms many other materials due to the nature of the material and the unique casting process, offering benefits that no other material can equal. By having no sand involved in the casting process, sand particles do not wear away tooling. There are also no common porosity concerns that affect sand castings. Given the weight reduction of 10% compared to steel, Dura-Bar offers similar mechanical benefits while being utilised in smaller and lighter envelopes, all the while offering high levels of pressure ratings. The natural lubricity of the graphite and fine microstructure means Dura-Bar is able to provide customers with more parts per hour during manufacturing and parts in the field last longer compared to other materials.
Dura-Bar is commonly used to replace thousands of applications that were originally aluminum, carbon steel, forgings and iron sand castings across many different industries. With Dura-Bar, Axiom Hydraulics will grow in markets including hydraulic manifolds, hydraulic cylinders and pumps and mobile hydraulics as a whole, amongst many other industries in South Africa. Today Dura-Bar is consistently enhancing its technical capabilities to grow and perform better than ever before. Current projects consist of producing new grades of metal, new shapes and larger sizes and increased efficiencies in its casting bar lines.
“The consumers of Dura-Bar benefit from the cost saving advantages the material provides by extending tool life, increasing machinability by 30% and reducing the overall cost of manufacturing. These significant cost savings can then be shared with the OEMs who are purchasing the components. Dura-Bar is extremely proud to be a business partner to Axiom Hydraulics as they extend our reach and supply of Dura-Bar to their well-established customer base in South Africa. Axiom Hydraulics’ in-house supply and machining capabilities, along with their strong reputation for hydraulic knowledge and support, made them an easy choice to partner with and grow our businesses together,” concluded Towns.
| Tel: | +27 11 334 3068 |
| Fax: | +27 11 334 4543 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.axiomsa.co.za |
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