A U.K. heat treatment specialist recently went operational with a new in-house mechanical testing facility, certified by UKAS, at its Cambridge plant.
With the new testing equipment, Wallwork, based in Bury, England, has the capability to run tensile, compression, and hardness tests on materials and components prior to and post heat treatment, boosting customer order turn-around times.
“Destructive testing is mainly specified by customers in aerospace, however, it is becoming increasingly common in motorsport, medical devices, and other industries where there can be no compromise in product integrity. The new facility gives us much quicker results than going out to an external testing lab,” said Andy Fox, operations director at Cambridge.
In addition to Rockwell hardness and shadowgraph is the new Z100 testing rig from ZwickRoell, which allows Wallwork to quickly identify any material or processing issues that could impact quality as well as data to refine existing metal heat treatment processes, component design and more. Wallwork operates vacuum brazing units at Manchester and Cambridge where the new Z100 has the potential to confirm joint strength between vacuum brazed materials.
“Faster turnaround of testing results is necessary for us to meet customer manufacturing targets and it also makes much easier the internal management of important accreditations,” said Fox.
