Metal spinning, essentially, involves forming flat sheet metal disks into seamless circular or cylindrical shapes. It is a useful processing technique when quantity does not warrant investment needed for draw dies.
The Process
The first step in the spinning process is to produce a form to the exact shape of the inside contours of the part to be made. The form can be of wood or metal. This form is secured to the headstock of a lathe and the metal blank is, in turn, secured to the form. Manual spinning techniques exist, and mechanical spinning lathes usually can be set up to force the blank against the form mechanically.
In addition to manual or power spinning, hot spinning is sometimes used either to anneal a spun part, eliminating the need to remove a partially formed blank from the lathe, or else to increase the plasticity of the metal being formed. In the latter category, some metals such as titanium or magnesium must be spun hot because their normal room-temperature crystal structure lacks ductility. Heavy parts (up to 122 mm in some cases) can also be spun with increased facility at elevated temperature.
Shapes and Tolerances
Basically, a component must be symmetrical about its axis to be adaptable to spinning. The three basic spinning shapes are the cone, hemisphere, and straight-sided cylinder. The shapes are listed in order of increasing difficulty to be formed by spinning.
Available spinning equipment is the limiting factor in determining the size of parts. Parts can be made ranging in diameter from 25.4 mm to almost 3.6 m. Thickness ranges from 0.010 to 122 mm. Most commonly, spun parts range in thickness from 0.059 to 4.7 mm.
Read more: Spun parts