The Reasons and Solutions of the Difficulty of Processing Stainless Steel
Stainless steel is one of the most important materials in modern industry. It is widely used in many fields due to its excellent corrosion resistance, heat resistance and wear resistance. However, stainless steel is difficult to process and the production cost is high. What are the main reasons why stainless steel processing is difficult, and what are the related solutions?
Firstly, the thinning of stainless steel is difficult due to its high strength and internal stress. As we all know, stainless steel material has high strength and hardness, and has a certain resistance to impact. Its internal stress is very high, and the metal is not easy to be cut and the cutting tool is easily damaged. In order to ensure the accuracy of the parts processed, the processing personnel need to reduce the tool angle and increase the cutting speed and cooling lubrication ratio to make the stainless steel parts thinning.
Secondly, stainless steel has poor warm-up resistance. Due to the high thermal conductivity of stainless steel, it is easy to produce quenching phenomenon during the processing in a short time. After quenching phenomenon appears, the plasticity of stainless steel will decrease, and the parts being machined will not be able to fully deformed, or even cause parts deformation. To cope with this problem during the processing of stainless steel, preheating should be done before machining, reducing the strain rate and the cutting speed.
The third is that stainless steel has poor chip removal performance. It is more difficult to remove chips in the case of stainless steel processing than ordinary carbon steel. Chip removal is the removal of machined parts from the machining surface, which affects the machining accuracy and machining surface quality. As the adhesion of stainless steel particles is larger, the common method for chip removal is to chose a certain pressure, low speed and small slot machining way, reducing the pressure of chips adhering to the blade and avoiding the difficulties caused by chip adhesion.
Fourthly, stainless steel has great abrasive wear resistance. Abrasives are substances such as particles, wires, or thin blades that are used to promote the removal of material or the deformation of a part. The greater the hardness of the material, the more difficult it is to work with abrasives. Stainless steel is harder than ordinary materials, and its machinability is also poorer. In order to solve this problem, machinists need to reduce the cutting speed and select the appropriate cutting tool and cutting fluid.
Finally, stainless steel has poor welding performance. Because stainless steel has strong corrosion resistance, it is difficult to be welded without the help of coating and welding preparation processing. On the contrary, it is easy to form a weld spot. To solve the welding problem of stainless steel, the processing personnel need to choose the appropriate welding method, choose the stainless steel welding wire with the same specifications, and carry out the cleaning, preheating and other processes before welding.
To sum up, stainless steel is more difficult to process than ordinary materials due to its high strength, low plasticity and high hardness, which also increases the cost of product processing. To solve this problem, we need to reasonably control the tool angle and cutting speed in the thinning process, set up preheating before machining, select the appropriate cutting tool and cutting fluid, select the appropriate welding method and welding preparation process and other measures. Only in this way can we reduce the difficulty of stainless steel processing and ensure higher product quality.
