​Application of sapphire crystal in engineering field

Application of sapphire crystal in engineering field

The watch industry is the first application field of artificial corundum crystal in history. As early as 1704, Debraute and Fatio, mathematicians from Geneva, suggested the use of gemstones in watch mechanisms, but this opinion was economically difficult to implement at the time. Once the ruby was put into industrial production, the famous Swiss watch companies "Breget," "Denis Blondel," and "Luis Odemar" became interested in this material because of its reasonable price, stable quality, hardness and wear resistance - originally suitable for friction matching materials. The dry friction coefficient between "ruby-steel" is 0.25 at 3.7GPa class pressure. Artificial rubies have a lower coefficient of friction with steel and are more stable than natural gemstones. In cooperation with watch manufacturers, the authors tested watch mechanisms with ruby elements, and in the case of friction mating, for 50 years of continuous operation, the ruby elements [7] did not show any wear.

Factories that produce precision technical gems produce billions of ruby and colorless sapphire elements each year for use in watches and other precision machinery. Mechanical watches contain flat stones with cylindrical holes, lubricated stones (spherical hollow cores), flat or spherically symmetrical stones with non-cylindrical holes and lubricants. Coated spherical gemstones are used as shaft supports. In order to function reliably for the anchor escapement, the input and output joint plates are used. The impulse from the anchor fork to the balance mechanism is converted by the oval gemstone.

Watch gems usually use dark red rubies. This tradition began in the days of hand-assembled watches. Red gemstones look beautiful and cause less eye strain.

The "watch glass" is made of colorless sapphire, a light-colored sapphire used by well-known manufacturers of high-quality watches. It's not a fad. You will see no scratches on these "glasses".

Sapphire and ruby are the most reliable gemstones in the mechanism. Commercially mass-produced sapphire mandrels are used to support the shafts of mechanisms that must operate continuously for decades (eg, water and gas meters). Such mandrels are flat or have different shaped conical notches. Ordinary bearings are made in the form of sleeves with cylindrical or non-cylindrical bores. Collection gemstone samples of watches and some institutions are displayed in Figure 1.29 of the appendix. Today, large bearings are being developed for engines, pumps that transport aggressive liquids or gases, and other devices.

The main requirements for bearing uniformity and wear resistance can be met with synthetic sapphire alone, since homogeneous natural crystals similar to synthetic sapphire are hard to come by. The inhomogeneity of the gemstone causes accelerated wear of the friction mating material; therefore, the life of bearings made of synthetic sapphire is longer

The accuracy of the ruler depends on the sharpness of the rhomboid mirror of the horizontal balance. Today, sapphire diamond mirrors with an apex angle of 35° are produced exclusively for rulers. The wear-resistant sapphire elements are unmatched. Automatic production line refers to the production of machine parts automatically controlled by the size of the probe. The contact part of these probes is made of spherical, hemispherical, conical or cylindrical sapphire or ruby.

High wear resistance must be a feature of wire dies. Therefore, in order to change the diameter of gold, aluminum or silver wires, wire dies of sapphire and ruby are used

As long as one day of operation, the steel nozzle of the strong sandblasting machine is worn out. However, sapphire nozzles can be used for 30 days. Water jet cutting is a modern technique used to cut ceramics, solid alloys, rocks and dangerous workpieces such as nuclear warheads, military rockets and gas containers. The quality of the cut and the productivity of the water gun are determined by the stability of the nozzle dimensions. In many cases, sapphire nozzles can successfully replace carbide nozzles.

Under the action of synthetic fiber yarns, sapphire yarn guides for high-speed looms basically erode and wear more slowly than yarn guides made of steel or glass. The yarn guides can have different configuration shapes: straight or curved at different angles due to plastic deformation. Rings used in spinning are another type of yarn guide. They must have high thermal conductivity (fishing line wears out faster when there is insufficient heat dissipation) and abrasion resistance. Therefore, the leading companies in the production of spinning equipment use polished sapphire yarn guide rings.

Machines used for electro-corrosion treatment of solid state alloys are equipped with sapphire guides. Several sapphire rods with wire grooves are installed in a certain way to make them chambers. The grooves are arranged in the direction of the high-speed moving sapphire wire.

Sapphire cutting is used for high-quality and fine-grained processing of copper, aluminum, and their alloys, as well as non-metallic materials. Compared to their cemented carbide counterparts, sapphire tools cut more accurately and achieve a higher surface quality with a smoother feed. The sharp angle of the cutting blade and the operation of one type of knife are shown in Figure 1.30. Sapphire micro-tools are used in the manufacture of micro-instruments.

Kunshan Shuojing Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. is involved in a wide range of new materials, and has complete preparation methods and means for functional ceramics and sapphire crystals, scintillation crystals, and laser crystals, forming optically transparent ceramics, sapphire optical windows, scintillation crystals, lasers and nonlinear crystals The main four series of high-tech products.