Has anyone any experience, or had any engine parts crogenically froze?

I have heard a few good things about this but I dont know too much about it. In particular freezing a gearbox as I was thinking of trying this as a cheap way to a stronger gearbox.

 

Interesting as from what ive read it alters the molecules in the metal when frozen and so makes the material stronger..... was some threads on here i think a while back.... expensive process though i think.

 

I thought it would be about £300ish to do a gearbox but Im not 100% on that.

Ive found a few things out on google but struggling to find a company in the uk that does car parts. Found some that do HiFi wires but not much else.

 

Found this place through a search over at 22b.... was in 2003 mind,but the link still works to the place that was going to be used......

Home

 

Thanks for that

 

Does your gearbox come back in the future like Dr Evil??



Sorry, im not helping am i??

Interesting info though

 

I'm sure that "Frozen solid" had a magazine write up recently. was quite unbiased and seemed to make sense.

Damo

 

I was under the impression that freezing already solid materials down to very low temperatures would simply make them more brittle. Heat treatment works on materials but I can't remember the specifics (my wife did metallurgy, but not me!), it's something to do with rearranging the structure of the material then letting it cool down without being disturbed leaves it in this 'evened out' state. I just can't see how freezing stuff is any more than a gimmick. If anything, it will take energy out of the material's structure and rather than reforming it stronger, it will just encourage stresses in the material to stay put.

Although I seem to remember in the 80's it was thought that if you put a Skyway mag wheel (BMXers will remember those) in the freezer it could straighten it out.

 

Come one, surely someone's going to argue with me on this?

 

Well according to the frozen solid website treating brake discs can increase their life 3-5 times over standard.

But I still want to here from someone that have had parts treated. Especially interested in gearboxes.

 

do they heat the things up first then freeze them quickly??. this would seem better than just freezing them i would have thought but i dont really have a clue but im keen to know more on the subject..

 

Yes a mate of mine who's got an Accord Type R and is heavily into his Hondas was telling me about something like this but it was a different firm that did the freezing. Brake discs were the main thing but I think he mentioned pads as well. Just seems a very weird thing to do, and suspiciously like money for old rope. Everything mechanical on a car is a compromise - 'long lasting' brake components tend not to work as well, softer metals may have give in them but won't crack catastrophically (I'm thinking of your gearbox here) whereas once you start toughening them up they become brittle - more able to withstand a beating but when they go, they really go.

Just had a look at the Frozen Solid website and there are some 'interesting' claims. Now I don't claim to be Einstein, but they seem to be making a lot of scientific claims without ANY evidence to back it up. The only bit they claim as feedback from one of their clients has had its identity removed so there's no way of knowing which firm it is that values their work so highly. Or at least they don't value it highly enough to allow their name to be used which seems odd.

Then there's the claim about 'Deep Cryogenic Treatment creates a denser molecular structure, resulting in a finer contact surface area that reduces friction, heat and wear'

That is obviously bull****. If you don't alloy the metal with anything else and don't take any part of it away, there's no way that you can change its molecular density, surely? Unless that is, you were to somehow change its dimensions at the same time, but then they go on to claim that 'Deep Cryogenic Treatment does not cause dimensional changes'

 

And another thing. Only heating (i.e. putting energy INTO the material) can break the molecular bonds allowing them to be realigned (e.g. heating up then quenching a metal to temper it). Cooling a material down can only keep the bonds more and more firmly fixed in place as it is taking energy out of the material's structure. As soon as it goes back to normal temperature the material will be identical to how it started. The more I think about it, the more it seems like bull****.

LOL classic, I've just read further into their website and it's mentioned just an afterthought that they temper the metals afterwards. That's the only part of the whole process that actually does anything and as known in normal metallurgy, the harder you make a metal, the more brittle it becomes. The trick is to get the right balance of hardness and resilience, which most components already have.

 

Just get ppg u tight get u know you you need to keep up with the jones,s

 

I'm no expert but our company cryo treats drill bits and burrs and it increases the life of them by about 600% and thats fact because I did the comparison tests.

 

Sorry, typo, it increases their performance by 100%

 

Interesting. So it increases the wear resistance but what about the actual strength of them, as in the shock resistance?

 

Yes that's what I'm getting at. It seems like at best it's just a hardening treatment which will basically decrease surface wear (and improve cutting ability in the case of a drill bit). But as you increase hardness you also always AFAIK increase brittleness, unless someone knows any different.

 

OK, I have checked this out and Cryogenically treating something does not make it brittle. What it does is change the molecular structure. For example, steel is made up of coarse molecules and cryo treating takes these molecules down to -175 degrees. This makes the molecules smaller and more compact. There is no evidence that this makes it any more brittle. What it really does is make it purer.