STLE 2025 Presentations by Falex Tribology and Falex Corporation

 

1. The challenge to determine anti-wear and extreme pressure properties of dry lubricants in industrial lubrication applications

Lais Lopes, Dirk Drees, Pedro Baião, Falex Tribology, Rotselaar, Vlaams Brabant, Belgium

Abstract: Dry lubricants are in industrial forming processes, notably wire drawing.  Consisting of flakes, pellets or powders, they stick to workpiece and pass through a die or forming tool, where localized high pressure melts them.  Characterizing their EP and Anti-wear properties in a lab test is challenging: a constant supply of particles into a standard tribological geometry needs to be achieved.  four ball wear/ep tests fall short.

Further, the aspect of cooling needs to be addressed, in the industrial setting the cooling is done by workpiece mass transport, but this can not be simulated in a lab test.  In this presentation, we show how a consistent and systematic application of dry lubricants into the tribological contact of a Pin&Vee block setup is possible, and how test conditions can be modified to obtain a repeatable and useful test method that correlates with expectations of the products under test.  This opens an avenue to a standardized QC test for solid particle lubrication.

 stle_2025_testingdrylubricants-in-pin-and-vee.pdf

 

2. The effect of limited lubrication by misting in a Pin&Vee Block simulation of cutting and forming fluids.

Lais Lopes, Pedro Baião, Dirk Drees, Falex Tribology, Rotselaar, Vlaams Brabant, Belgium

In previous work, the use of the standard Pin&Vee block method was expanded by adapting lubrication methods, alloys and data interpretation, to obtain a correlation between tapping torque experiments and the new Pin&Vee Block method.  Testing was always done with excess lubrication, so the question has arisen what happens with misting conditions, which are common in certain metalworking processes.  To answer this question, the research is expanded to misting conditions, to determine differences between a fully submerged and misted tribocontact.  In addition to the change of the lubrication application, also the influence of different alloys, characteristic for some industrial cutting or forming conditions, is studied.  Aluminum and copper alloys, as well as stainless steels are being compared in this test method.

 stle_2025_the-effect-of-limited-lubrication-by-misting-in-the-pin-and-vee-animations.pdf

3. GUEST PUBLICATION : Tribological performance of a Ni based 3D printed aeronautical alloy

A. Papaniloaou, A. Tzanis, P. Skarvelis, B. Koutsomichalis, E. Georgiou, Hellenic Air-Force Academy, Athens, Greece; L. Lopes, D. Drees, Falex Tribology, Belgium

Showing the potential to produce '3D-printed' aeronautical alloys with a welding technique. This technique, while additive manufacturing, overcomes some of the limitations of the 3D-printers (size, compatibility, deployability) while having the potential to generate the same high temperature resistant alloys.  This technique would be suitable as repair technique, as well as for production parts.
Tribological investigation - notably dry abrasion and friction tests - shows the comparability of these materials to state of the art AM SLM 718.

 hafa_stle-2025_tribological-performance-of-a-ni-based-3d-metal-printed-aeronautical-alloy_v2.pdf