When you look at metal under a microscope it has peaks and valleys from the manufacturing and/or tooling process. When you have things like gears that interact with each other (metal to metal), those peaks and valleys create friction, which in turn generates heat. In a race car application, you want to have the smoothest surface possible for metal to metal contact to reduce the friction and heat which will allow you to effectively use more of your horsepower and make your parts last longer through reduced temperature. ISF is the Super Bowl of metal finishing.
Grinding is the traditional final metal finishing operation performed on engineered metal-to-metal contact surfaces such as roller bearings and some gears. It results in a surface with a unidirectional pattern that corresponds to the direction of the final grinding operation. Grinding with successively finer grinding wheels is expensive, repetitious and ineffective. It simply results in a surface that has more, closer-spaced rows of shorter height asperities. The process has proven applications in many industries including aerospace, automotive, gearing & bearings, medical, military, motor sports, off-highway and power generation.
Will this hurt my part or change its size? The “cutting” process removes a minimal amount of material from your part, but leaves you with a part that is "isotropic", or uniform in all directions. This metal finishing process has been tested and certified in many industries and is currently in use in military applications and has been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)for use. How does it work? The ISF Process is a chemical and physical process that knocks the peaks down flat by cutting and removing a very very small (3/10000 of an inch) amount of material from your part. This is different that grinding or buffing as it “folds over” the peak and actually makes it worse.
Once the peaks have been cut down, you are left with a flat consistent piece of metal that will operate more efficiently as it interacts with other metal. Ideally we do parts like transmission gears and ring and pinion gears to reduce drag and more effectively use the horsepower you already have. The metal finishing process is a 2 stage process that finishes with a “burnish” that makes the part come out looking shiny, almost as if it was chromed.
This article was added on Wednesday 20 January, 2010.
