Aluminum Bronze - SelfLube's Material of Choice

With the Tooling Industry poised for strong growth in 2014, components maker SelfLube is gearing up to meet the expected demand. This will include new hiring, new machinery and equipment and increased inventory of aluminum bronze. But, bronze is a very old material, used thousands of years ago by ancient Greeks and Egyptians. The Bronze Age ended two thousand years ago, so why are we still using bronze in the twenty-first century?

"Good question," remarks SelfLube Owner, Phil Allor. "Aside from being an ancient material, bronze is also difficult to work with. It's slightly gummy so a lot of heat is generated when you try to cut it. And, heat is the enemy of precision machining. It's hard on cutting tools and the thermal expansion of work piece caused by the build up of heat plays havoc with holding precision tolerances."

All that said, SelfLube uses aluminum bronze because it is by far the best material available for components such as bushings and gibs that are used to guide and control motion. "One reason is that aluminum bronze has a sort of natural lubricity," Allor goes on. "The other is the gumminess. What was your enemy when in machining becomes your friend when the component is put in service. Because it is gummy aluminum bronze tends to redistribute itself along the axis of movement as the parts slide against each other. This has an amazing effect in that it greatly reduces galling and wear."

SelfLube is the leading U.S. manufacturer of conventional and self-lubricating components used in molds and dies. As an ISO 9000 registered company with five successive audits with zero non-conformances, SelfLube is well positioned to support the tooling industries needs.