The main purpose of this article is to present a new way of straightening hardened shafts. The straightening of regular shafts is usually not difficult, but the situation is very different in case of hardened shafts. The regular shafts are usually straightened by bending of the shaft in the opposite direction than the original deformation. Sadly, this approach cannot be applied on hardened shafts, because of the brittleness of highly hardened material. Mesing Ltd. in cooperation with Brno University of Technology are now trying to automate the process of straightening by changing the stress inside of the hardened material. This method uses controlled impacts of a ram on the surface of the shaft which has to absorb the energy of the ram. The impact causes a plastic deformation of the surface of the shaft and changes the inner stress. At the end of this article is the design of such measuring and straightening setup shown and described.
Science Journal 