The UK manufacturing centre leading the way in advanced structural testing

Design it, make it – and prove that it’s right. It’s a philosophy that underpins any successful manufacturing project, so when Sheffield-based steel fabricator A K Orme and Sons landed a China-bound contract to supply strengthening rings for large grinding discs, the integrity of the product had to be ensured. The rings are made by cutting steel rods to length, bending the lengths into a circle and welding the ends together, which means that the weld strength is critical. The challenge of testing these parts was presented to the Advanced Structural Testing Centre (ASTC) at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing (AMRC).

Effective testing required cutting both welded and unwelded sections, out of the ring, and machining the sections so that the tensile strength could be measured perpendicular to the weld. Delivering tensile test pieces to meet this criterion – straight pieces, correctly orientated, cut from a curved rod – required the use of accurate polymer jigs, which were designed and produced by the AMRC’s design and prototyping centre’s additive manufacturing facility. The test pieces were machined on a two-axis lathe, and tested within the ASTC.