Alloys in Mobile Machinery 

End Uses     

• Kingpin and drive bushings, boom bushings, thrust washers and wear plates in off-road equipment 
• Landing gear bushings, track roller bearings, rod ends and hose connections in commercial and military aircraft 
• Drill string centralizers, valve seats, wear pads and drill bit bushings for petroleum exploration and completion 
• Wear bars or ways on mechanical presses 
• Valve seats, valve guides, wrist-pin bushings and connector rod bushings in racing and high performance engines 
• Slippers, port plates, rotors and sleeve bushings in rotary pumps 

 Consider the down time costs: 

• 300-ton dump truck: $30,000 per day, 350 days per year! 

When your heavy equipment joints take a beating, turn to ToughMet^® bearings to extend maintenance cycles, reduce down time and warranty repairs, and enhance performance.  

Why Brush Wellman Alloys? 

Brush Wellman’s ToughMet^® is used today in Agricultural, Aerospace, Construction, Mining, Off-Highway, On-Highway, and High Performance Racing equipment because of their unique combination of properties, their excellent quality, and their consistent reliability. These alloys are available in rod/bar and tube forms, and demonstrate: 

• High tensile, compressive, shear, fatigue, and corrosion fatigue strength combined with good ductility. Brush Wellman alloys are produced to engineered tempers specially designed for specific mechanical needs. 
• The highest modulus of resiliency in commercially available metals. 
• High hardness, excellent wear resistance and cavitation erosion resistance. 
• Resistance to chloride stress cracking and pitting. 
• Non-galling/non-seizing to metals such as austenitic stainless steels, nickel, titanium and aluminum alloys, and HVOF coated steels. 
• Excellent machinability. 
• A stable coefficient of friction when mated with other materials over a wide range of speeds and loads. 
• High fracture toughness and fatigue crack propagation resistance, from cryogenic (see Design Center) to elevated temperatures. Unlike steel, there is no ductile/brittle fracture transition behavior. 

Benefits of Using Brush Alloys in Mobile Equipment.
Natural resource development presents materials engineers with the challenge of designing components for one of the most complex and hostile environments possible. Capital and operating costs connected with major resource development projects are very high and protection of the environment throughout the life of the project is paramount. Consequently, delays or accidents from equipment wear, malfunction, or failure on an offshore oil platform, or in an underground or open-pit mine, can be economically and environmentally damaging. 

Functionality and reliability of critical equipment under these conditions is an absolute necessity and requires the best material. Brush Wellman alloys are used where no other materials will succeed. Engineers choose Brush Wellman alloys to solve the challenges connected with natural resource development and production because Brush Wellman has decades of experience in this industry and unsurpassed technical knowledge of the characteristics and applications of its alloys. 

Major mobile and off-road equipment manufacturers are discovering how Brush Wellman alloys enable exciting new designs of highly-productive machinery, and at the same time, reduce the risk of failure of machinery and equipment in the field. (Case studies: Joy Mining, Euclid-Hitachi) 

Brush Wellman alloys reduce the wear rate of moving parts in machinery and protect expensive components from wear damage. Critical tolerances and clearances of parts remain intact much longer. Wear rates can be reduced significantly to the point where operators have proven an extension of the useful life of their machines or an extension of the time elapsed between maintenance cycles. Lower wear rates also provide critical margins of safety in equipment used for a wide range of procedures and processes. Wear rates are reduced by significant amounts, which creates real value for customers. Twenty-fold decreases in wear rate of critical bearing and bushing clearances are not uncommon. 

Components made from Brush materials are economical to acquire because of the ease with which they may be obtained or fabricated. Brush alloys are readily available worldwide from both company-owned service centers and independent distributor partners. 

Technology, products, service, and value are all available worldwide from Brush Wellman Inc. and its distributors. Contact us for more information!