Could you tell us a bit about your company and why you're here at MACH 2018?
The company is Bonal Technologies. We're at the show to introduce the technology to companies that do machining or welding on metal. Our technology is a stress relief process, using a very mild subharmonic energy. It’s so mild it can actually be used during welding.
What are the advantages of using the Meta-Lax?
The advantages of using Meta-Lax as a stress relief process is that when used in advance of a machining stop, it prevents the distortion from occurring from the machining; or grinding or drilling. Also, the same process prevents premature fatigue when a drill housing is out in service, or a trust or a weldment that it won't break early. If a weld shaft were to use this during the actual welding for new manufacture or for repair, the benefits there is that it prevents the weld distortion from occurring in the first place and it improves the weld quality. Like, shaking out the porosity, impurities and getting a finer, more uniformed weld grain. Which means that the weldment will be much harder to crack in service. Therefore the part will last longer in service.
In which industries can the Meta-Lax be beneficial?
It’s very beneficial in the power industry, mining, die casting, ship building industry and various other industries. The process involves inducing the metal part to an increasing amount of vibrational energy until the work piece displays a harmonic curve. A harmonic curve, you might think of a bell shaped curve when the frequency is the amount of vibration and the displacement of the part is the Y-axis. So you've got the X-axis being frequency, the Y-axis being the displacement. As you increase the vibrational energy, you see this bell-shaped curve develop.
The Meta-Lax technology mandates that the process finds the harmonic curve, merely to establish where the lower portion of that same curve is. The leading lower portion of that same curve, when the energy is applied there, the harmonic curve shifts over and repeats as the part becomes stress relieved.
If they were to use it during welding, they maintain that subharmonic energy until the weldment is complete.
It has been used in some of the most sophisticated parts that this world has produced. For example, the housing on the Hubble Telescope, that goes to Mars and takes pictures. That has been Meta-Lax stress relieved. Many of the autobody carriers for General Motors, for example, that hold the car in place while it's being assembled, they don't want the frames distorted at all while the car is being built.
Thousands of molds that make all kinds of plastic parts for the car and computer industries as well as the medical industry. There are just so many applications. If someone is using metal and they're suspicious of any sort of distortion from machining or distortion from welding or premature cracking in service, or cracking upon cooling, this could be a potential benefit to use. There are numerous, just thousands of different applications for this technology.