Why Shot Peening?
The purpose of shot peening is to create a compressive stress and plastic deformities in your materials, which helps to protect against microcracks. It is used in functional applications for gear parts, coil springs, connecting rods, turbine blades, gearwheels, etc. It also has cosmetic applications and will produce more pronounced results than sandblasting, creating a more dramatic effect.
Benefits Of Shot Peening
The overall benefits of shot peening can be summed into one conclusion: it improves the quality of your materials. It is a valuable investment in keeping your materials healthy and has been around as early as the Bronze Age in strengthening armor, swords, and tools. Generally, its advantages can be separated into two distinct sections that all go into improving quality. First, it prevents the surface from many dangers that can occur in your materials. Second, it also helps in strengthening and altering of parts. The following benefits can be explained in more detail in the following sections below.
Prevention Of Cracks
As shot peening is an effective process for delaying or preventing cracks in highly tensile stressed alloy components, the process has evolved substantially in the 21st century. Yet, its purpose still remains the same. Because high-strength steel is rather prone to cracking compared to its lower strength counterparts, shot peening will reduce notch sensitivity in high-strength steel. Notch sensitivity is also known as fatigue cracking. So, how can shot peening, a method that stresses your materials, help prevent micro cracks?
As cracks begin on surface imperfections, getting increasingly worse as time goes on, an initial compressive stress will prevent cracks from forming. This stress will help increase resistance to fatigue failures, corrosion cracking, corrosion fatigue, hydrogen assisted cracking, fretting, and galling and erosion caused by cavitation. As plating is a process that often develops cracks in materials, shot peening will thoroughly prepare your materials for plating. As such, shot peening crack prevention benefits can be summed into the following:
- Improves overall strength of your materials
- Enhance fatigue strength of your materials (reduce notch sensitivity in high-strength steel)
- Prevents cracking that occurs due to gradual wear
- Corrosion prevention
- Hydrogen assisted embrittlement prevention
- Prevents fretting
- Prevents galling
- Prepares your materials for plating
The advantages the process are not limited to protecting your materials from initial cracks. Again, it also helps you in strengthening and altering of your materials to fit your needs. The prevention of cracks aided by shot peening will maximize your component’s potential for those optimal results.
Strengthening And Altering Of Parts
During manufacturing, materials are prone to deformation. As nobody likes working with a deformed material if it’s not necessary, selective shot peening can straighten critical areas of materials to a certain degree. Sometimes poor bonding in electroplated parts can occur. Shot peening is a useful method in that it exposes imperfections and detecting adhesion problems that can cause further frustration down the road. After grinding, materials will be more susceptible to cracks. Therefore, the process will convert tensile stress to comprehensive stress to produce a strengthened layer which will enhance and lengthen the life of your steel parts.
Having pores in your materials can cause hydraulic leakage in transmission housings, gear boxes, and die-cast parts. With shot peening, you can close these porous castings. If you find that you are in need of a bigger or smaller part size, it can be used to increase or decrease component sizes depending on your needs. Altering sizes is most helpful when you first start manufacturing, designing, or rebuilding a product. Due to shot peening’s great effect on the surface, it simultaneously reduces friction and can improve oil retention. This will increase the lubricity in parts such as cylinder walls and engine pistons. As such, further benefits of this process can be summed into the following points:
- Straightens deformed parts
- Reduce tensile stresses after grinding
- Reduce porosity in casting
- Alteration of parts
- Improve oil retention and lubricity
Again, the benefits of shot peening are not limited to cracks. The process will also greatly benefit you in prepping your materials for further use. As shot peening is a complex process with time dedicated to doing the practice diligently, Wilcox ensures that the benefits that come with shot peening are optimal. Depending on your needs that require initial shot peening, we make sure our system is up-to-date and engineered to the best of its ability.
Our Shot Peening Service
At Wilcox High-Velocity Ltd., we use air blast systems, with a variety of spherical cast steel shot and glass beads to create a uniform and effective peening. In air blast systems, materials are introduced into the path of high air pressure through a variety of methods. High-pressure air is accelerated through a nozzle that will be directed at the desired part that you want to be peened. By using air blast systems, it allows for better control. Professionals in the industry understand the benefits of this process to your materials and follow guidelines and specifications carefully. If you have any questions regarding our shot peening service or about shot peening in general, do not hesitate to contact us today!