Heavy Duty and Specialised Torsion Bar Production Continues at Brooks
With several decades of experience and considerable investment in tooling and processes, Brooks Forgings has become the go-to company for heavy-duty and specialised torsion bar production in the UK.
Typically found in locomotive, commercial, defence, and off-highway applications, torsion bars must be manufactured to tight tolerances, with optimum grain flow and compression-only found with hot forging and hot bending techniques.
Case Study
The latest contract required the supply of 100 torsion bars from 76mm diameter 709M40 material.
The raw material of EU origin is purchased and checked against original 3.1 mill certificates and then sawn to the required developed length. Upset forging gathers and forms the material to the desired shape at each end of the bar. Special bracing jigs are used to ensure each end of the bar is inline and square. The forging process also compresses and aligns the material grain flow to create strength around the key mounting areas.
The next stage is the hot bending process that uses a combination of specially designed temperature-controlled heating furnaces and force dissipating tooling as it is critical that the bends are consistent, have no deformation, and are formed to the correct radius.
Once bending is complete, the torsion bars are sent for heat treatment. This requires the use of custom-made cradles that are designed to minimise movement during the heat treatment process. Additional inspection and quality checks include tensile testing, 100% crack detection, and straightness analysis using our high precision Faro Gage arm (CMM).
The bars are then shot-peened, and finish machined in-house to the required specification and tolerances. A full quality pack is supplied with the torsion bars that provides full batch traceability for each component.
If we can assist you with a current or future project, please do contact us.
