The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,100 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 18 trips to carry that many people.
AgieCharmilles Cut 30 P
Dexmet has brought the capability of Wire EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) technology in-house to quicken the development process and provide better turnaround time to its customers. The new capability will allow Dexmet to quickly generate custom expanding dies for application specific expanded products or provide custom cut geometries out of already expanded materials.
The engineers at Dexmet purchased an AgieCharmilles Cut 30 P from Ross Machinery, also located in Wallingford, CT., because of its advanced features of a simple to use graphics user interface to reduce programming time, large work area and travel capabilities and accuracy at high cut rates . The new Wire EDM technology allows the engineers at Dexmet to execute a range of jobs without any external applications handling everything from contour creation to part production.
The AgieCharmilles CUT 30 P Wire-Cutting EDM has a wide range of cutting capabilities from very hard carbide materials over 300mm thick or the ability to cut intricate shapes in thin delicate foils. Wire-Cut EDM utilizes a fine single-strand metal wire, typically brass, as the electrode and through a series of rapidly recurring electric arching discharges between the electrode and the work piece material is removed along the cutting path by melting and vaporization. The process produces no cutting forces so there is very low residual stress put on the work piece with little to no change in mechanical properties or shape.
Dexmet new capabilities offer the following advantages to its clients:
The images below are courtesy of Dexmet:
Samples from CUT 30 P
Samples from CUT 30 P
Samples from CUT 30 P
Produced by CUT 30 P
To learn more about the current developments at Dexmet contact Eric Toro via e-mail at: e.toro@dexmet.com
Dexmet now offers a new process variation of corrugating their precision expanded materials. This process variation was developed for high-performance applications that require the expanded material to be much thicker or larger, that require more surface area and better cross-directional flow.
Dexmet continues to apply new process variations to their expanding process. This process variation provides a needed configuration of expanded materials to R&D and engineering departments that are currently developing new advanced battery, structural, filtration, fuel cell and renewable energy applications. See images below:
Top view of corrugated expanded metal
Side view of corrugated expanded metal
For more information on Dexmet’s new corrugated process or for samples of corrugated expanded material, contact Eric Toro, Dexmet’s marketing specialist via e-mail at e.toro@dexmet.com. Samples are subject to availability and may take up to two weeks to receive.
One of the questions that we frequently get from customers is, “We’re having trouble out in the shop working with your expanded metal mesh. Is there anything I can do to make it easier for my manufacturing people?” Fortunately, the answer is, “Yes, there is.” But let’s first talk about what the problem might be and then what you do to make things go smoother.
During the expanding process, die teeth pierce the incoming metal foil from above creating the distinctive diamond shape pattern. Depending on the geometric configuration specified by the customer, the foil may also be put under longitudinal tension. Both of these processes result in residual stress in the mesh, commonly known as “work hardening”.
As anyone familiar with metals manufacturing knows, work hardened material is stiffer, springier and more brittle than stress free metal. The good news is that work hardening effects can largely be eliminated through the thermal process of annealing. However, some amount of residual stress can be helpful. It is usually easier to handle thin meshes without wrinkling or losing grid geometry if some stress is left in the metal. More to the point, the amount of residual stress can usually be optimized for the customer’s particular application by controlling the time & temperature cycle of the annealing process. Dexmet engineers are experts at annealing most metals and can help you choose the right specification for your application.
Another result of the expanding process is that the thickness of finished material is increased by up 800% as a result of the twisting of the strands. This increase in the z-dimension is quite beneficial in some applications (e.g.; pressing battery electrode powder onto mesh current collectors), but not always. The z-dimension is also not uniform across the width of the mesh role. Dexmet can control this parameter to tight specifications by passing the expanded mesh through dimensioning rollers in a post processing step. The mesh can be “flattened” back to the original incoming foil thickness or lightly rolled to ensure consistent edge to edge thickness.
Also, it is important to note that expanded mesh is anisotropic. That is, its properties are different in different directions. Most engineers recognize the difference in latitudinal (stronger) and longitudinal (weaker) strength. But other properties, such as electrical resistance, also vary and control of these should be discussed with a Dexmet engineer. In roll-to-roll processes, it is important to remember that mechanical behavior is dependent on the directionality of reel. Dexmet can re-roll mesh on new cores to ensure uniform behavior in the customer’s process.
The more upfront information that is shared with Dexmet engineers during the early product development stage, the more likely your future processing issues will be significantly reduced or eliminated.
