An improved material test system for high strength aluminium sheet products

“印象科技有限公司（ITL）是一家相对较新的制造企业，发展铝板热成型。ITL已经在为一些高档汽车制造商进行小批量/中批量生产，作为其增长战略的一部分，它现在需要提高产量。作为产量提升过程的一部分，我们需要收集大量关于HFQ工艺的数据，以使我们的客户相信它是稳健的，并且我们很好地了解各个阶段的操作参数。这些终端客户要求成型零件满足一定的机械性能（抗拉强度、屈服率和伸长率）。为了确保我们符合这些标准，我们目前使用便携式硬度计并将其与机械性能相关联。该设备现在被证明不能完全检查材料特性，因此我们正在寻求改进测量方法。这种改进对于HFQ（热成形淬火）进入包括航空航天、铁路和大批量汽车在内的新市场领域是必要的。该项目的愿景是开发一种新的、新颖的、非破坏性的、可靠的测试过程，可以通过快速检测方法可靠地识别材料的机械性能。这将首先用于确保我们的产品100%满足我们的材料要求，并具有快速可靠的过程，然后将用于帮助改进我们的过程，以提高吞吐量和质量水平，同时减少产品变化。关键目标将是一个过程：-*是快速的（<60秒检查一个零件）。*是可重复的（测量R&R结果<30%，以满足汽车检验标准）。*在测量输出和材料特性之间提供高度相关性。*是非破坏性的。该项目的重点将是研究使用涡流测试对材料进行无损检测的可能性，然后通过测试和分析涡流结果与材料特性之间的相关性。这个项目是创新的，因为目前市场上还没有已知的非破坏性、可靠的铝测量过程，虽然最近发布了一个等效的钢等级测量过程，但这并不适合转换为有色金属材料。”

"Impression Technologies Limited (ITL) is a relatively new manufacturing business developing hot forming of aluminium sheet. ITL is already in low / medium volume production for a number of premium car manufacturers and as part of it's growth strategy it now needs to ramp up volumes. As part of the volume ramp up process we need to collect large amounts of data on the HFQ process to give our customers confidence that it is robust and that we understand well the operating parameters of the various stages.These end customers require that the formed parts meet certain mechanical properties (Tensile Strength, Yield & elongation). To ensure we meet these criteria we currently use a portable hardness checker and correlate this to mechanical properties. This equipment is now proving to be not fully capable of checking material properties and hence we are looking to improve the measurement method. This improvement will be necessary for HFQ (Hot Form Quench) to enter new market areas including aerospace, rail and high volume automotive.The vision of this project will be to develop a new, novel non destructive, robust test process that can reliably identify material mechanical properties from a fast inspection methodology. This will be used firstly to ensure 100% of our products meet our material requirements with a fast and reliable process, it will then be used to help refine our process to improve throughput and quality levels whilst reducing product variation.The key objectives will be a process that :-* Is fast (<60 seconds to check a part).* Is repeatable ( with a Gauge R&R result of <30% to meet automotive inspection standards).* Gives a high degree of correlation between measurement output and material properties .* Is non destructive.The project focus will to be to investigate the possibility of using eddy current testing to non destructively test material and then to create, through test & analysis a correlation between eddy current results and material properties.This project is innovative as there is currently no known non destructive, reliable measurement process on the market for aluminium, and whilst an equivalent process has recently been released for steel grades - this is not suitable for translation to non-ferrous materials."