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Institute for Physical
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IPRT Company Assistance Success Story

 

Connecting with a Fastener Manufacturer

Textron Fastening Systems – Decorah Operations manufactures high volumes of threaded and unthreaded fasteners daily. For the Decorah, Iowa, company, inspecting these parts for defects is a daunting task requiring automated sorting devices and numerous inspection personnel.

Such a situation can greatly benefit from nondestructive evaluation technology, a collection of methods that can be used to detect defects and measure physical or mechanical characteristics of a material or component. It was only natural, then, that TFS-Decorah should connect with the nondestructive evaluation group in IPRT Company Assistance. This group’s scientists are experts in NDE technologies and have vast experience in helping Iowa manufacturers apply inspection methods to their processes.

“Better understanding of our manufacturing processes is the key to prototype programs, and that is exactly what IPRT has provided,” says Scott Josephson, process engineer at the company. “With this knowledge, IPRT has enabled TFS-Decorah to speed up development time and ensure continued success for an Iowa manufacturing company. We would recommend their services to any company seeking a competitive advantage in the workplace today.”

Tour Leads to More

The relationship began when Josephson and Craig Winter, an industrial engineer at TFS-Decorah, attended an “Introduction to NDE” seminar at Northeast Iowa Community College in Calmar, Iowa. The seminar, facilitated by Tom Kammer, the college’s account manager for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, was led by IPRT’s Dave Utrata and Rick Lopez, both scientists in IPRT’s nondestructive evaluation group. The overview seminars and more focused presentations are regularly offered around the state, and are available at no cost upon request.

Josephson and Winter were interested in learning more, so Utrata and Lopez visited the TFS-Decorah facility. During the tour, they noted two areas where the program’s nondestructive inspection and materials knowledge could help. First, the scientists researched automated inspection systems that could be used on the company’s fastener product lines and contacted equipment vendors to develop ideas on how existing equipment could be better implemented, or identify new devices that could offer improvements. Josephson says this assistance saved the company numerous hours of research time.

Revealing Flaws

In a second project, Lopez and IPRT metallurgist Paul Berge offered assistance on a new product line on which Josephson was working. TFS-Decorah was making a new fastener from a titanium alloy but hoped to use existing equipment rather than purchase specialized machinery to process the nonferrous metal.

“The initial prototypes exhibited an odd grain flow pattern, along with surface anomalies caused by the room-temperature forming process,” Lopez explains. So, he performed fluorescent liquid-penetrant inspection on numerous prototypes to identify problem areas.

With this technique, a fluorescent dye highlights surfacebreaking flaws when viewed under an ultraviolet black light. Lopez and Berge then cross-sectioned these questionable areas and examined them with a microscope to determine their depth and cause. They also brought in the expertise of Alan Russell of Iowa State University’s materials science and engineering department, who offered his insight on the problem as well.

This data was a great benefit to TFS-Decorah. “Through the physical testing of our titanium prototypes, we were able to determine the microhardness along the forming slip lines and better understand the microstructure impact due to cold forming,” Josephson explains. IPRT wors for Iowa