MSA has taken delivery of its newest piece of equipment that will improve the quality of our heading dies. The Extrude Hone manufactured by Kennametal is an abrasive flow machine where a chemically inactive and non-corrosive media, similar to soft clay, is forced through heading dies to improve surface finish.
Internal surfaces like as those found in a heading die are notoriously difficult to polish and up until now MSA was only able to polish a small portion of the internal surfaces. With the Extrude Hone all internal surfaces can be polished producting uniformly smooth finishes while preserving geometry.
The advantage to a fine polished surface is the ability to smooth out critical fatigue points and remove stress risers that may lead to crack propagation. Also improved is material flow within the die resulting in better die filling and head forming.
Adding the ability to polish internal surfaces is an important step in teh continued development of our tool making capabilities as we grow into the future.