Failure Analysis of a Crimping Mechanism

This article details the failure analysis of an aluminum bronze bushing that is utilized in a crimping machine. The crimping mechanism has an indenter (made of tool steel) that is guided by the aluminum bronze bushing that began to fail after 50,000 cycles or approximately 2 weeks of production operation. Typical run times prior to these failures were on the order of months. These failures were causing users to conduct excessive maintenance (i.e., swapping out aluminum bronze bushings). Initial concerns with quality of material were raised; however, after a detailed analysis of the entire system it was clear that there were several issues at play that were not previously considered. As a result this study focused on identifying appropriate materials and design changes of the indenter and bushing to reduce the wear and thus increase life.