New Mechanical Pretreatment Process to Prepare Aluminum Crankcases for Thermal Spraying

摘要

The increasing demand for vehicles with reduced fuel consumption and emission is the reason why the material aluminum is frequently used for crankcases in the automotive industry. A method to increase the wear resistance of the cylinder bore surface is to coat the surface by thermal spraying. To secure that the coating adheres to the aluminum substrate, the surface of the cylinder bore has to be pretreated. The state-of-the-art pretreatment processes (chemical bond coats and blast processes) show some significant disadvantages. Therefore, a new pretreatment process has been developed, which allows to rough the cylinder bore by using a machining process with a defined cutting tool. This paper describes the attributes and advantages of this new machining process.