TECHNOLOGY
JAPANESE BRICKMAKER BENEFITS FROM NEW DEVELOPMENT IN REPAIR MATERIAL FOR KNEADER ROTORS
N
ew developments in materials have enabled production of an ultra-hard wear facing
alloy in the form of a welding wire. Enrique Matey, Castolin Eutectic’s Global Product Manager Welding Consumables, shares the results from a manufacturer of refractory bricks that is evaluating the material in Japan. Industrial companies can improve
performance by using the latest developments in materials and technology when they are introduced to the market. However, the critical first step is testing and evaluation so that they can be certain that a new product achieves its promise. One example is a Japanese producer
of refractory bricks for lining industrial furnaces and kilns. Following a successful trial, it has adopted the recently-launched EnDOtec 6070N welding wire for regular maintenance of its kneading machine. The kneading machine is essential to production and combines the required materials as fine powders and mixes them into a clay. Once the clay is evenly
mixed, it is moulded into bricks and other elements before being fired in a kiln.
Heavy abrasion Refractory bricks achieve high temperature resistance thanks to a high content of ceramic materials such as alumina, magnesia and zirconia. The challenge when processing these is that they are extremely hard and abrasive, which leads to heavy surface wear and loss of material on the steel rotors that turn and fold the clay. This is particularly true on the leading edge, which experience high forces. As a result of losing this material,
the kneader becomes less efficient over time. Typically, the manufacturer finds that its rotors lose around 4 kg in weight every month. To overcome this, it schedules regular
service outages to apply a wear facing coating based on an ultra-hard material. Not only does this return the rotors to their original dimensions but the wear facing will resist the abrasive nature of the alumina, magnesia and zirconia and
keep the kneader in service for longer. Previously, the service technicians used
a high-performance nano-alloy as the wear facing coating for this application. Its nano-scale microstructure resists abrasion from the fine powders being processed. However, the alloy is relatively costly and not always easy to obtain. Therefore, when EnDOtec 6070N became available as a flux-cored welding wire, the team saw an opportunity to use it. Not only is the new wire more
competitively priced than the original material, but it also has extremely high hardness and wear resistance. That means it could potentially increase component life and extend the maintenance intervals.
Repairing the kneading rotors The kneading rotors are approximately 300 mm in diameter and 500 mm in length. During an initial visit, a welding technician applied approximately 4 kg of a wear facing coating based on 6070N to the leading edge of the rotors. They also rebuilt areas of the rotor that had experienced more limited
Heavy wear on the leading edge and body of the rotors exhibits after one month in operation
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