Blade Shaped Tool Hard Surface Layer via Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing blade-shaped tools for industrial applications, such as doctor and coater blades, face challenges in combining high wear resistance, stiffness, and flexibility, with issues like premature wear due to hard particles and the formation of 'burr' leading to defects and damages.
Innovation Solution
The use of cold-rolled strip steel with hard surface layers formed through Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation, incorporating reactive elements like nitrogen, oxygen, and metals, which create hard products like nitrides and carbides, providing enhanced hardness and bending strength while preventing burr formation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If the blade is made thin to improve flexibility, then flexibility is improved, but bending strength deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies a hard surface layer only to specific regions of the blade (the wide sides and edge) while keeping the core material softer and more flexible. This localized hardening allows the blade to maintain flexibility in its core structure while having enhanced hardness and bending strength where it contacts the printing cylinder, thus resolving the contradiction between flexibility and bending strength.
Solution Approach 2:
The blade consists of a composite structure with a soft flexible core material and a hard surface layer. This composite construction combines the flexibility of the core with the bending strength and wear resistance of the surface layer, allowing the thin blade to maintain both flexibility and sufficient bending strength.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the blade is made thin to improve flexibility, then flexibility is improved, but wear resistance deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The hard surface layer is applied locally to the regions that experience wear (wide sides and edge) while the core remains flexible. This localized hardening provides wear resistance exactly where needed without compromising the overall flexibility of the thin blade structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The composite structure combines a flexible core material with a hard wear-resistant surface layer, allowing the blade to be thin and flexible while maintaining excellent wear resistance in the contact regions through the hardened surface.
3Productivity
If high contact pressure is applied to improve doctoring efficiency, then doctoring efficiency is improved, but burr formation increases causing damages
Solution Approach 1:
The hard surface layer is applied to the regions that experience high contact pressure (wide sides and edge) to prevent burr formation in these critical areas. The localized hardening provides resistance to the high pressures needed for efficient doctoring while preventing the formation of harmful burrs that could damage the printing cylinder or web material.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This solution significantly extends the tool's wear resistance and bending strength, allowing for high-pressure contact without bending or burr formation, thus improving the tool's performance and longevity in industrial applications.
Implementation Method 1
The use of cold-rolled strip steel with hard surface layers formed through Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation, incorporating reactive elements like nitrogen, oxygen, and metals, which create hard products like nitrides and carbides
Data Source
Figure 1A~6
Figure 7~8
Figure 9~10B
AI summary
A blade shaped tool belonging to that type of tools which comprises doctor blades and coater blades, which have a strip-shaped body of steel which is cold-rolled, hardened and tempered to a hardness between 500 and 700 HV. At least the two wide sides of the body are covered by a hard surface layer (6a,6b) provided through Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation of hard reaction products of type carbides, nitrides and/or oxides. The tool has in comparison with conventional tools of corresponding steel grades an improved bending resistance and in the working edge portion of the tool also a significantly higher resistance to wear.