WCA September 2019

From the Americas In April 2018 T-Mobile and Sprint entered into a definitive agreement to merge in an all-stock transaction. They seek to create a company which will be 41.7 per cent owned by T-Mobile’s parent Deutsche Telekom (DT, which would have overall control) and 27.4 per cent owned by Sprint parent SoftBank Group Corporation, with the remaining 30.9 per cent in free float. Despite winning over Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai, the long-running merger continues to face opposition from the Department of Justice, which believes that the agreed concessions are not sufficient to resolve its concerns. The Engineer highlighted a new manufacturing process likely to be of interest to the automotive industry [19 th June, “Process brings more aluminium alloys into automotive”]. The automotive industry could make more use of high strength aluminium alloys made from powders, using a new single-step advanced manufacturing process. The process, which produces nanostructured rods and tubes directly from high-performance aluminium alloy powder, has been demonstrated by a team at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Using a novel solid phase processing approach, the team say they’ve eliminated steps that are required during conventional extrusion processing of aluminium alloy powders, whilst achieving a notable increase in product ductility. The team’s research is described in a paper titled “High Ductility Aluminium Alloy Made from Powder by Friction Extrusion”, published in Materialia . High-performance aluminium alloys made from powder are used in lightweight components for aerospace applications, where cost is not a limiting factor. However, these alloys have typically been too expensive for the automotive industry. A typical extrusion process for aluminium alloy powders is energy and process intensive, requiring multiple steps to mass produce the material: the loose powder must be loaded into a can and degassed. The can is then sealed, hot pressed, pre-heated, and placed into the extrusion press. After extrusion, the can is removed (decanned) to reveal the extruded part made from consolidated powder. In this study, the team says it eliminated many of these steps, extruding nanostructured aluminium rods directly from powder in a single step, using PNNL’s ShAPE (shear assisted processing and extrusion) technology. Aluminium Alloy process for automotive applications

Extrusion of aluminium alloys directly from powder eliminates canning, degassing, hot isostatic pressing, decanning and billet pre-heating. In the ShAPE process, a powder – in this case, an Al-12.4TM aluminium alloy powder – is poured into an open container. A rotating extrusion die is then forced into the powder, which generates heat at the interface between the powder and die. The material softens and easily extrudes, eliminating the need for canning, degassing, hot pressing, pre-heating and decanning. “This is the first published instance of an aluminium alloy powder being consolidated into nanostructured extrusions using a single-step process like ShAPE,” said PNNL materials scientist Scott Whalen, who led the study. “The elimination of both the processing steps and the need for pre-heating could dramatically reduce production time, as well as lower the cost and overall embedded energy within the product, which could be beneficial for automotive manufacturers who want to make passenger vehicles more affordable, lighter, and fuel-efficient for the consumer.” Re-think on aluminium tariff David Shepardson reported for Reuters on a tariff change of heart [“US waives tariffs on Japanese aluminium for Tesla battery cells”]. The US Commerce Department has agreed to Tesla Inc’s request to waive 10 per cent tariffs on imported aluminium from Japan, used in the manufacture of battery cells at Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory. The company made the request in documents posted in April, saying the aluminium is produced by Nippon Light Metal Co Ltd and seeking a tariff exclusion for 10,000 tonnes annually. The Commerce Department responded in June, and posted on a government website that the aluminium “is not produced in the United States in a sufficient and reasonably available amount, or of a satisfactory quality.” The waiver is good for one year. The battery cells are assembled into packs that are the energy source for the Tesla Model 3 vehicle as well as energy storage products, Tesla said in its request, adding: “Tesla is the only US manufacturer of these battery types and planned production of these batteries will increase exponentially over the next few years.” Tesla’s exclusion request specified several different widths and thicknesses for aluminium sheets. Tesla said US manufacturers cannot “…meet the alloy composition or thickness requirements. “Domestic producers also cannot meet the annual volume requirement.” No objections were filed to Tesla’s request. Tesla previously sought other tariff exemptions from the US trade representative’s office for Chinese-made parts, including the Model 3 car computer and the Autopilot “brain”, that were rejected.

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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2019

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