Increasing the Durability of Trimming Dies Used to Clean Anodes in the Aluminum Industry

Abstract

Increasing the durability of trimming dies used to clean anodes is a very important goal in order to reduce the costs involved in obtaining aluminum. The research focused both on choosing an optimal material for the execution of trimming dies and on the application of technologies for plating active areas and, at the same time, on optimizing the geometric shape of the active area of the trimming die. In order to choose an optimal material from which to make the trimming dies, it was taken into account that they are usually made of X210Cr12 steel. In the stage of choosing an optimal material for the execution of the trimming dies, five steels were taken into account, namely: K105, K107, K110, K360, and K460. Analyses of the metallographic structure of the passage area were performed between the metal deposited by welding and the base material, demonstrating the fact that hot welding plating allows obtaining a more homogeneous metallographic structure compared to cold welding plating. The choice of new material was not a solution to increase the durability of the trimming die. Change in the trimming die geometry determined a reduction in deformations of about 13.8 times and of the equivalent stresses of about 7 times compared to those obtained in the case of the old trimming die. In addition, the durability of the trimming die with the new construction shape increases approximately three times compared to the trimming die with the old geometric shape. This demonstrates that the solution to increasing the durability of the trimming die is to adopt an optimal geometry of the active part at the expense of choosing an optimal material.