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Secat, Inc.
1505 Bull Lea Road
Lexington, KY 40511
TEL: (859) 514-4989
FAX: (859) 514-4988
Email: info@secat.net
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| Welcome! |
Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Secat e-newsletters. We will keep these newsletters brief but informative, allowing you to quickly browse through information, and click to a webpage when you'd like more detail.
Please send your comments to info@secat.net
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| Grain Refinement in Cast Aluminum |
For ingots and shaped castings, refinement of the cast grain structure is important from both the producibility and properties standpoints. Grain refining materials and processes continue to evolve based on increasing fundamental understanding, while new methods promise effectiveness at lower cost along with reduced energy and environmental impact.
Grain refinement during casting processes refers to the control of the grain size of the primary phase crystallizing during solidification. In some sense, the term "grain refinement" is misleading in that a fine cast grain size of itself is less important than obtaining an equiaxed (i.e. not columnar) grain structure of uniform size.
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| Developments in Aluminum Heat Treating |
The discovery of the precipitation hardening capability of aluminum alloys at the beginning of the 20th century opened up high performance applications in automobiles to aerospace. A hundred years later there is still much to learn and exploit from both the fundamental understanding and practical implementation aspects of aluminum heat treating. This article discusses some areas of recent progress.
First let's begin with a review of the basic process. Heat treatable aluminum alloys gain strength from subjecting the material to a sequence of processing steps called solution heat treatment, quenching, and aging. The primary goal is to create sub-micron sized particles in the aluminum matrix, called precipitates, which in turn influence the material properties. The resulting heat treated products carry a "T" temper designation, for example, 6061-T6. While simple in concept, the process variations required depending on alloy, product form, desired final property combinations, etc. make it sufficiently complex that heat treating has become a professional specialty unto itself.
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| Measuring Inclusions in Aluminum Melts |
Non-metallic inclusions are an unwanted by-product of molten aluminum processing, and significant effort is made to remove them by filtration techniques. Knowing the effectiveness of these techniques, on-line and in real time, is a goal for inclusion measurement in both the cast house and foundry environments. What are the options?
First, let's take a quick look at the need. Cost-effectively improving the metal quality of aluminum is an ongoing pressure on commercial organizations, whether the companies are producing ingots for subsequent processing or shaped castings in the foundry. But what is metal quality? Essentially metal quality is the degree to which an aluminum alloy is free from alkali metal contaminants, non-metallic inclusions, and dissolved hydrogen. The extent to which an aluminum melt contains these undesirable features depends on the source of the metal (smelter vs. remelt) and processing, while the degree to which they need to be reduced depends on the final product performance requirements. A complete discussion of this complex situation is beyond the scope of this short article, so let's focus on the area of non-metallic inclusions.
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