Success story
Sagger made of Ceramics

 
Ceramic components make their way into all of our daily life areas – at work and in our spare time.

 

 

The specific properties of this material group in particular qualify the structural elements for thermal and chemical strain as well as tribologically challenging environments. Unfortunately, one of the big advantages, the high level of hardness, brings disadvantages for the workability of this material. Hard ceramic components can only be processed with adamantine tooling and is therefore expensive. This means, that a precise contour-fit production is especially significant in this case. How the powder press technology with the potentials of KOMAGE machines can provide a lucrative contribution, is shown in the field of refractories. Sintering aids help the industry and craftsmanship in the processing of form parts during the sinter procedure. Next to the sole transport function of sinter plates, also capsules ‘so-called sagger’ are used, which have a compensative as well as oven-atmospheric influence. In order to place these in a most space-saving fashion (for example. in a batch-) oven, angled forms would be advantageous. 

In this example, the manufacturer produces the square sagger out of 2 separate components. First, a bottom plate in one press tool and then the casing/wall in an additional tool. Each time one user took off the parts, placed bottom and casing together on the sinter plate, where both parts merged in the sinter process. 

Due to the highly different part heights of casing and bottom, the production of one part in the existing press was not successful. Because of the obvious saving potential of resources using variable frame height, the parameter for the press system with multi-level could be defined in a project discussion. 

During trials in our technical center on our press type S (ejection press without fixed stops) it became clear, that the respective component with the required height of more than 5xwall strength could be pressed without any problems, after the possibility of free programmability and the simultaneous relaxing of all applied press axes against the single press directions were used. Especially the last-mentioned possibility showed once again, that press-technical limits regarding parts height can be raised for many materials. The result was a higher output of parts/min. at lower machine load capacity and therefore additional cost savings.