Stackhouse

Magnesium has been utilized in production laptop structures, movie cameras, digital cameras, PDAs and other consumer electronics products and services due to its high strength to weight ratio. When magnesium is alloyed with aluminum, the resulting product is quite gentle and powerful, and easily machinable.

The main problem in machining magnesium metal may be the risk of fire ignition when dry cutting. Fire might occur once the melting point of the alloy (400-600 degrees Celsius) is realized during machining. The little chips and fine dust produced throughout cutting are also highly flammable and cause a critical fire risk if not precisely treated.

There are several points to note when machining magnesium:

Firstly, use a lower cutting speed when comparing to cutting metal. The workpiece temperature goes up with an upsurge in reducing speed and also smaller undeformed chip thickness. Put simply, the slower the machining speed and the more expensive the chips, the low the temperature is likely to be. Due to this reason, some organizations have changed woodworking tools for machining magnesium so as to achieve greater chips and lower fire hazard.The cutting tools used must have aid and clearance angles which are sufficiently large to avoid unwanted cutting tool-workpiece friction, thus lowering the heat generated through the cutting process.

2nd, keep the machining center clean. Keeping the magnesium chips precisely and washing the machining centers regularly are essential aspects of machining magnesium. Keep a box of cast iron chips near by when machining magnesium, If fire does occur, smother the fire with the cast iron chips.

Finally, if coolants are important for high speed machining, don't use water-based lubricants. Alternatively use a light mineral oil, or perhaps a water-soluble chopping fluid such as Castrol Hysol MG particularly formulated for machining magnesium. Some businesses in Japan use semi-dry machining with a misting system.

The next point is to observe the temperature all through machining. Tests were completed using thermocouples fitted to the workpiece to observe the temperature during machine. Dry cutting of magnesium alloy thin walls was accomplished using cutting speed of 440m/min for roughing and 628m/min for fine finishing.

Regardless of the fire hazards, as competition from overseas low-cost production bases intensifies, and magnesium becomes increasingly found in electronics products and services, most machining work retailers would likely discover machining of magnesium a distinct segment worth pursuing. success