Lubricants Overcome Spline Forming Problem

An automotive steering mechanism manufacturer approached John Neale with a difficult process problem. This company was forming a 17 tooth spline on a steel rod for part of a steering mechanism. The tool was a carbide die and the spline was forming in a single draw. An expert from John Neale went to view the application and get a feel for the current problems and assess whether a change in lubricant could be a solution.

Spline forming operations were carried out and pick up was observed on the second operation.This pick up steadily gets worse and quickly damages the die.A brief discussion about lubricant selection made it clear that a lubricant solution could be possible by using advanced solid lubricant chemistry.

Increasing the viscosity of the lubricant significantly was not an option because of a dry grinding operation straight after the forming operation where swarf would stick to a thick lubricant.

John Neale suggested a new technology lubricant which had only recently been developed was tried.This lubricant contained 100% synthetic additives but significantly was combined with special solid lubricants to enhance lubrication and reduce the chance of pick up.

Superdraw ST40-SL was supplied within a couple of days for trial.
The product was phenomenally successful; very quickly 100 components were run off with no pick up at all.Production continued over the next two days with almost miraculous results.

This special lubricant has given an improvement in tool life of many hundred times, which is something the customer felt was impossible.
The customer quickly chose to replace their existing high performance broaching oil with Superdraw ST40-SL on all their spline forming ops.This new solid lubricant enhanced chemistry can be applied to all very severe cold forming and cold drawing applications like horizontal broaching, tube drawing, and spline forming.

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