Titanium Forged Automotive Impeller

Titanium Forged Automotive Impeller

A titanium forged automotive impeller is a metal-based part used in a variety of applications.titanium forged automotive impeller It is fabricated by forging titanium or an alloy thereof into the desired shape and then finish-machining it into its final product. Forging and machining are both methods of producing components but each has its own advantages and disadvantages in terms of fabrication speed, cost, and accuracy. It is often difficult to make a complex "final" product such as a compressor impeller using the forging process alone because such shapes as the rake of the leading edge and backward inclination of the trailing edge have complicated geometric forms that obstruct the forging die insertion tool or forged member, making them difficult to pull out from the forge die.

The inventor has discovered a way to overcome this difficulty and produce such a complex forged titanium compressor impeller using a hybrid process that incorporates both forging and machining.titanium forged automotive impeller The resulting titanium compressor impeller is more accurate, faster to fabricate, and less defective than the cast product produced by conventional forging techniques. It is also surprisingly economical compared to machining the titanium from cut metal.

Titanium is a highly desirable material for many industrial applications, such as aerospace structures and automotive engines. It has a much higher fatigue strength than aluminum, typically over 500 MPa in high-grade titanium alloys, making it suitable for critical aircraft components. It also offers good corrosion resistance and is extremely malleable. It is therefore desirable to make complex shapes, such as those needed for a compressor impeller, from titanium.

However, forging titanium is not always practical because of the difficulty in pulling out the forged metal from the forge. It is also slow and expensive to machine titanium because it is softer and has a lower metal removal rate than aluminum. It is therefore desirable to find a way to make complex titanium parts such as compressor impellers quickly, inexpensively, and with high dimensional accuracy.

Injection molding is one method of making metal components such as compressor impellers from polymers, such as polyethylene terephthalate (PETG), polypropylene (PP), polyetheretherketone (PEEK) and Polyphenylene sulfide (PPS). Injection molding is an automated manufacturing process that involves the four-step cyclic processes of melting, packing, cooling and ejection to fabricate the required part. The quality of the fabricated component depends on several parameters, such as raw materials, mold design and injection process. A variety of techniques have been developed for fabrication of complex rotating parts using injection molding. However, most of these have problems in terms of production time and costs. It is desirable to find a better method of fabrication that is both fast and economical. The inventor has discovered such a method and it is described in the present invention. It consists of two different steps: 1) forging the titanium into a close-to-final-product shape, and 2) machining the forged titanium to complete the fabrication of the compressor impeller. This hybrid process produces the resulting compressor impeller more accurately, faster and more economically than either of these processes alone.