Portable Incline Screw Feeder to Meter and Elevate Stainless Steel Powder for Powder Metallurgy Process

General Description

Collins Aerospace, a unit of Raytheon Technologies Corp, is a leader in technologically advanced and intelligent solutions for the global aerospace and defense industry. Created in 2018 by bringing together UTC Aerospace Systems and Rockwell Collins, Collins Aerospace has the capabilities, comprehensive portfolio, and expertise to solve customers’ toughest challenges and to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving global market.

Collins Aerospace designs and manufactures landing gear components for military aircraft using powder metallurgy. Powder metallurgy is a metal-forming process performed by heating compacted metal powders to just below their melting points and forming to shape under high pressure. For a specific application, stainless steel powder needed to be metered and elevated into the powder metallurgy process. KWS provided an accurate and reliable metering system.

Design Parameters

1. Product Type: Stainless Steel Powder
2. Material Density: 215 Lbs. per Cubic Foot
3. Capacity: 35 Cubic Feet per Hour
4. Duty: Intermittent

KWS Advantages

Engineers from KWS, Coperion and Collins Aerospace worked closely to design a system for unloading stainless steel powder from containers and elevate the bulk material to a Coperion bag dump station. KWS performed system integration using drawings and design information provided by Collins Aerospace and Coperion. KWS created 3D models of the system to verify stack-up height and accurately determine the required screw feeder incline angle and length.

Stainless steel powder is extremely dense and weighs 215-Lbs. per cubic foot. Dense powders are difficult to store, meter and elevate. With over 50 years of experience and 100,000 installations, KWS accessed prior successful installations to determine proper equipment design. Inclined screw feeder calculations, exclusively developed by KWS, ensured proper design and a successful installation.

KWS Special Features

KWS provided an inclined screw feeder with a non-split tubular housing and close tolerance stepped pitched screw to improve metering accuracy, efficiency, and capacity. A special inlet hopper was provided to hold a minimum of 10-cubic feet for continual feed to the dump station. KWS also designed a custom heavy-duty movable frame on high-capacity swivel casters, so the complete unit was portable.

KWS included an emergency safety pull cable switch to protect personnel, equipment, and processes. An operator can activate the safety pull cable switch if there is a potential safety or production issue, shutting down the screw feeder.