Technical Requirements for Forged Wheels

The technical requirements for forged wheels mainly include heating requirements, forging requirements, post-forging cooling, and heat treatment requirements. Strict adherence to these requirements is crucial to ensuring product quality and is an essential production discipline. Therefore, the technical requirements must be meticulously followed during operations.

Heating Requirements for Forged Wheels

1. Familiarity with Heating Standards: Before heating, operators must familiarize themselves with heating specifications and inspect related instruments, ignition devices, and burners to ensure the furnace operates under normal conditions.

2. Furnace Preparation: The furnace chamber should be cleaned before loading the forged wheel blanks.

3. Heating Different Cross-Sections: When heating steel materials with varying cross-sections in the same furnace, follow the heating specifications for the larger cross-section first, and forge the smaller cross-section materials first.

4. Placement and Rotation: Blanks should be placed properly in the furnace, and frequent rotations are necessary during heating to ensure uniform heat distribution.

5. Avoiding Overheating: At high temperatures, while ensuring proper combustion, reduce excess air to maintain a positive pressure inside the furnace and prevent overheating or burning of the metal.

6. Loading Practices: Load the furnace with smaller quantities more frequently. Avoid prolonged stays in high-temperature zones. If the blanks cannot be forged after exceeding the holding time, reduce the temperature to preserve the blanks and prevent damage.

Forging Requirements for Forged Wheels

1. Preparation for Upsetting: The height of the blank before upsetting should not exceed 75% of the forging hammer’s stroke.

2. Surface and Ends of the Blank: The ends of the blank must be flat and perpendicular to the axis, with no defects such as pits or cracks on the surface.

3. Hammering Limits: The reduction in height per hammer blow must be within the allowable range of the material's plasticity.

4. Prohibited Actions: Upsetting below the final upsetting temperature is strictly prohibited.

5. Hammering Technique: Hammering must be appropriate, neither too light nor too heavy. Rolling should be quick, with frequent and uniform rotations.

Post-Forging Cooling and Heat Treatment Requirements

1.Cooling Requirements

· Air Cooling: Place the forged pieces either scattered or stacked in the workshop area. Avoid drafts, ensure the ground is dry, and prevent hot forged pieces from contacting cold steel plates to avoid uneven cooling that may cause bending or cracking.

· Cooling in Ash/Sand Pits: Before cooling, preheat the ash (or sand) box/pit with red-hot iron blocks to ensure a sufficient layer of ash (or sand) coverage.

· Furnace Cooling: The temperature of the forged piece before entering the furnace should generally not be lower than 500°C. The furnace temperature should be maintained between 500°C and 700°C.

2.Heat Treatment Requirements
Heat treatment for forged wheel components focuses on temperature control. The temperature range is determined based on the material properties, and constant monitoring is essential. The objectives of heat treatment are to refine coarse grains caused by forging, alleviate work hardening and residual stresses, reduce hardness, improve machinability, and prevent white spots within the forged pieces. This ensures the desired metal microstructure and mechanical properties are achieved, laying the groundwork for subsequent heat treatment processes.

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