Planetary carrier from Stackpole International wins EPMA component award
November 25, 2016
The European Powder Metallurgy Association (EPMA) announced the winners of its 2016 Powder Metallurgy Component Awards at the World PM2016 Congress & Exhibition, Hamburg, October 9–13, 2016. The PM Structural Parts category was won by Stackpole International for the development of a planetary carrier in collaboration with ZF Friedrichshafen AG.
It was clear from the entries in this category that conventional press and sinter PM technology is continuing to find new applications in many sectors, whilst replacing traditional manufacturing processes in others. This planetary carrier, manufactured by Stackpole International, was said to be an excellent example of the collaboration between teams with expertise in the Powder Metallurgy process and automotive transmission design.
Working with engineers at ZF, Stackpole helped define the engineering properties required for this application. Although not having overall design responsibility, Stackpole undertook the bench testing and established better options for material selection. The density of the spider section of the planetary carrier was reported to be 7.0g/cm³ and the guide late was 7.5g/cm³. Tensile strength was said to be 510MPa and 730MP with hardness of 80HRB and 90HRB, respectively.
The EPMA’s 2016 component awards were open to all members of the association. The Metal Injection Moulding category was won by Schunk Sintermetalltechnik GmbH for a 2C-Pin, the first serial part worldwide produced by the Metal Injection Moulding of two different materials. The award in the Hot Isostatic Pressing category was presented to Aubert & Duval for a hipped astroloy casing for a high speed turbine and the Additive Manufacturing category was won by Airbus Operations GmbH for a bionic partition developed for use in the Airbus A320.
