Equipment for off-line testing of sheet tribo-systems

Abstract

Many sheet metal forming industries dealing with tribologically difficult materials e.g. stainless steel, aluminum and titanium alloys are searching for new, environmentally benign tribo-systems [3]. This is due to increasing demands as regards environmental issues dictated by legislation in Europe [4], Japan [5]. Industry is, however, reluctant to carry out production tests of new tribo-systems without any prior knowledge about the possible performance, since these tests are costly due to production stops, which may take even longer than anticipated, if the new system turns out to have poor performance and the tools therefore have to be dismounted and repolished.