Excessive Knife Wear
The manufacturing of cut nails was automated in the USA. A nail machine was developed with three parts: flat metal strips are cut in long- thin- triangular shapes, holding the nail, and forming the head. The metal strip is then turned 180 degrees to cut the next nail strip. Although this process is much slower than wire nail manufacturing, cut nails are still used today for unique applications such as masonry and some decking applications.
A cut nail manufacturer reported excessive knife wear on nail cutting machines used in their nail manufacturing process.
Touchstone performed a thorough metallographic examination of the sheet samples and determined that a significant amount of mill scale had been forced into the sheet during shotblast cleaning.
Because of the high hardness of the mill scale, excessive knife wear occurred.
Changes in the shot-blast procedure were suggested to increase the efficiency in the scale removal process.
This is one example of numerous industrial problems and failure analyses Touchstone has conducted.
Should you have metallurgical failures or the need for process improvement, please contact us. Our services include…
- Failure Analysis Index
- Corrosion Evaluation
- Light Microscopy
- Mechanical Testing
- Metallography
- Research & Development
- Scanning Electron Microscopy
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Failure Analysis Examples
If you don’t see a case study related to your interests, please contact us, as we likely have solved the same or similar problem in the past.