How is a Shovel Blade Made?

1. Cuting out materials

First of all, the spade requires a certain hardness and stiffness. Then we cut out the steel through gas cutting method. The scraps are cut first and then comes to the steel blade, it is cut into equal parts. I’d like to take this opportunity to explain the principle of gas cutting: Gas cutting refers to a process of preheating the metal to the ignition point by the use of gas flame and making it burn violently in the pure oxygen. During this process, the slag will generate and release a lot of heat. Then blowing off the oxidized slag with the high pressure oxygen blowing force. The released heat will further preheats the next layer of the metal to its melting point. The gas cutting process of metal is a continuous process of preheating, combustion and slag blowing. In fact, it is the process of burning metal in pure oxygen, rather than melting.

2. Heating and rolling

In this process, it need heat the steel first, and keep the temperature between 1000 and 1200. The Austenite crystallization can be formed only when the temperature is above A3 line, so it should be heated to that temperature range. The heating process is slow and requires patience. After the heating, the steel will be forged first. The forging machine will heavily forge the steel to make the structure and performance well matched. After forging, it is time to roll. During this process two rollers’ gap is slowly adjusted, to ensure the metal will be rolled into a thin sheet. The workers need to be very careful in the workshop for personal safety purpose. After the steel are rolled to a certain thickness, it come to the last step, the fine pressing, makes the thickness of the steel belt nicely even. This is the production process of steel belt.

3. Punching and forming

The finished steel belt will move to the

next process - Punching. In this step, a corresponding mold is made by the engineer's fine calculation. The mold will fall down on the steel through the pressure released by the punching machine, make it to the shape we need. 

This is the process of making shovel blade.