A step towards the disruption of conventional manufacture

Royce engineers have been working closely with AIMS Limited, a specialist UK manufacturer of extruder barrels and screws, and Cranfield University to help develop net shape parts using Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) of alloy powders.

An image of the Royce HIP in the Royce Translational Centre

For many years AIMS products, using the HIP bonding of Sagittite wear and corrosion resistant layers to the working surfaces of extrusion parts, have demonstrated an order of magnitude lifetime improvement over traditional alloys. Nevertheless, these processing routes have required the use of expensive machining operations to finish the parts to final size.

In this new work, building on IPR held by AIMS, the product is finished using the HIP and a final polish is all that is required.

In the programme, Royce at the University of Sheffield is providing the HIP capability at the Royce Translational Centre, and the Surface Engineering and Precision Centre at Cranfield is supporting on Hipped product analysis. Discussions with other partner organisations is at an advanced stage.

Commenting on the programme, Rod Tompsett, Group C.E.O said, “Looking at the knowledge base of our Team we have the basis of a group to quickly develop the innovative steps underpinning this technology, and thereafter scale this to production sized demonstrators. Early results are most encouraging, leading us to believe that we could move to scale up by the middle of this year. We equally expect that in achieving these goals, we will have a technology ideally suited to the generation of other net shaped parts, for other applications.”

Dr Robert Deffley, Principal Engineer at Royce at the University of Sheffield, said: “This project has been a fantastic opportunity to showcase our capabilities, utilising our expertise in hot isostatic pressing here at the Royce Translational Centre. It is helping us deliver on our mission to accelerate commercial exploitation of innovations and deliver positive impact for the UK companies. The results are promising and we look forward to continuing to work together on this and future projects.”

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