A new copper based hermetic sealing material: A comparison with AgCu28GeCo0.3
For vacuum brazing applications Hermetic Sealing Materials (HSM) with low partial pressure are widely used to join copper or stainless steel parts. For joining copper AgCu28 is a widespread material, which is well characterized and investigated. For stainless steel, AgCu28Ge2Co0.3 is commonly used if the same brazing temperature as AgCu28 is required. Umicore Technical Materials has developed a new copper-based HSM. The tensile strength of the stainless steel joints on stainless steel is comparable to AgCu28Ge2Co0.3 and the wettability is significantly improved. In this article, the physical properties of the alloy and its brazed joints will be presented in comparison to AgCu28GeCo0.3. However, today the silver content of HSMs is more in focus than in the past decades, because it has the biggest impact on the material prices. To accommodate this trend the total silver content of the new HSM is reduced by almost 44 %.
New hermetic sealing material for vacuum brazing of stainless steels
For vacuum brazing applications such as in vacuum interrupter industry Hermetic Sealing Materials (HSM) with low partial pressure are widely used. AgCu28 dominates the hermetic sealing market, as it has a very good wetting behavior on copper and metallized ceramics. Within recent decades wetting on stainless steel has become more and more important. However, today the silver content of HSMs is more in focus than in the past decades, because it has the biggest impact on the material prices. Umicore Technical Materials has developed a new copper based HSM, CuAg40Ga10. The wettability on stainless steel is significantly improved compared to AgCu28 and the total silver content is reduced by almost 44%. In this article the physical properties of the alloy and its brazed joints will be presented compared to AgCu28.
Traceability strategy for gear-pitch-measuring instruments: development and calibration of a multiball artifact
There is a strong demand to ensure the traceability of gear-measuring instruments (GMIs). We propose a multiball artifact (MBA) for the evaluation of pitch-measuring accuracy. The aim of the MBA is to transfer the minimum uncertainty from a calibrated value at the National Metrology Institute of Japan (NMIJ) to a measured value of GMIs at a shop floor. The MBA is composed of equally spaced high-accuracy balls around an axis. The pitch-measuring accuracy of GMIs is evaluated by measuring the angular pitch deviation of the balls instead of the angular pitch deviation of a gear. We calibrated the angular pitch deviation using a coordinate measuring instrument (CMM) at the NMIJ and adapting a multiple-orientation technique. We proposed a calibration strategy of the angular pitch deviation. The calibration value of the pitch deviation for the MBA at the NMIJ was obtained with a measurement uncertainty (U95) of 0.2 µm. We evaluated the pitch-measuring accuracy of a GMI using the calibrated MBA. Each value of U95 for the cumulative and single pitch deviations for the left and right flanks was less than or equal to 0.5 µm. The small uncertainty was transferred from the NMIJ to the GMI.