Every crane has a set of tungsten alloy counterweight which guarantees the counterbalance and prevents the machine of toppling over. Mobile cranes are heavy equipment vehicles that have been designed to lift, lower and transport heavy loads. They are employed in the off-highway industry to move freights beyond the normal capability of a man.

Why It is Important to Apply Proper Counter Weight?

The tungsten alloy counterweight plays a critical role. If it is not designed properly and doesn’t possess the right size and shape, it turns automatically into an extremely dangerous subject that can make the vehicle topple over in the direction of the load or backward. When trying to lift a load, a crane can topple over in the load’s direction if the counterweight set up is too light for the load and booms the configuration. Otherwise, the counterweight can topple a crane backwards in situations when:

The counterweight is too heavy for the boom configuration.

The crane is traveling up a slope.

When the crane is on soft ground, inadequate timbers are placed under the outrigger pads below the counterweight.

Outriggers or any other ground support are not extended or lowered into position and cannot resist the combined weights and tipping forces.

If the boom configuration is lifted too high and there is not enough load applied on it.

Tungsten Alloy Counterweight are The Safest Option

Mobile cranes are far smaller than the fixed crane configurations, but still facing the same loads challenges. Especially because of their size, they need small, but very heavy counterweights. Thanks to its density only tungsten alloy can meet those requirements. Safe and risk reduction safety guidelines should be followed on a daily basis to ensure that the vehicle is in proper working condition. Preventive maintenance and safety inspections should be regularly performed to detect potential accidents. Mobile crane counterweights ensure the safe operation of the vehicle by keeping it stable and upright. Best design practices, most reliable raw material selection as tungsten and regular safety inspections are essential for the performance of a high-quality counterweight.

Tungsten alloy counterweight is used in a wide range of different applications, including helicopter. Here, in this article, we take a closer look at two cases of its application in different helicopters.

Tungsten alloy is an excellent material to manufacture tungsten alloy crankshaft counterweights in motorbike. All engines need perfectly balanced crankshafts to ensure optimized performance. If a crankshaft is not correctly balanced, the consequences can be severe. 

Counterweight is an integral part of a variety of big machines dealing with huge load. By balancing the weight, it secures a safety performance of tractors, trucks, cranes, excavators and others. If you own a truck that you want to have a safe trip, it is important that you do not just go out into the wild with the equipment that came with your vehicle. Even Jeeps usually require special upgrades to ensure that they are able to handle driving on terrain that is not paved. Failing to ensure that you have the right elevation and counterweight in your truck, tires or wheels can lead to expensive damage. Tungsten alloy counterweight is the best choice in truck to ensure the balance of weight when loading and unloading goods.

Tungsten alloy counterweight is used to counterbalance an opposing mass in a linear or rotary motion system, allowing movement with lower driving forces. Tungsten alloy can be used as an ideal material for counterweight in elevators. Heavy metal tungsten alloys are 90% to 97% pure tungsten in a matrix of nickel and copper or nickel and iron. The addition of these alloying elements improves both the ductility and machinability of these alloys over non-alloyed tungsten. 

Tungsten oxide electrochromic film has great application value in the field of building energy-saving glass due to its real-time adjustment of indoor lighting and thermal insulation. It is considered as the next generation energy-saving window material to replace Low-e coated glass.

The heat-shielding properties of their films were investigated by near infrared spectrometer. Synthesized Cs0.33WO3 particles with annealing at 800 ℃ typically formed hexagonal tungsten bronze structure for good absorption of NIR, size observed as being 30-100 nm and <150 nm. Especially, remarkable absorption of NIR wavelength ranges makes ceramic composite films good candidate for use as a heat shielding window, it clearly shows useful for applications where heat shield is required.

Nanowhiskers, nanowires and nanorods are nearly perfect materials, which have superior performance compared with metal materials. As a structural material, tungsten whiskers or tungsten nanowires are used to reinforce and toughen refractory alloys, ceramic materials, etc. Can significantly enhance the toughness and strength of the material.

Tungsten alloy gains a great deal of popularity in fishing sinkers thanks to its non-toxicity. Tungsten is a rare element of very hard and dense metal. Lead has the density of 1.7 times of water, while tungsten 19.3 times of water. It is mined in only a few areas around the world, China is the biggest producer of tungsten. 

In the last article, we talked about the brief history of darts and the fact that tungsten alloy got more and more popular in darts. Now let’s have a deeper understanding of the application of tungsten alloy in darts.

1.0 The Importance of Dart Weight

The introduction of tungsten darts revolutionized the game, and this is not an exaggeration. Tungsten darts allowed two mutually interrelated things to happen. As darts became smaller, they also became heavier, and heavier darts radically improved player’s scores! A tungsten dart, being heavier than a brass or plastic dart, will fly through the air in a straighter line and with more force; which means bounce outs are less likely to happen. Therefore, heavier darts provided players with more control during the throw and made tighter grouping more likely. Anyone that knows about the intricacies of darts scoring systems will tell you about the importance of being able to place darts in tight groups consistently. Being able to place darts in tight groups consistently will make you an overall more balanced player of the game. Not being able to hit 180s all the time is not so bad when you can knock down a checkout on demand and hit doubles all the time.

2.0 The Perfect Metal for A Dart Tungsten Percentages and Composition

Tungsten darts are not a one size fit all affair, there are quite a few options when it comes to choosing to purchase a tungsten dart. Because of the chemical properties of the metal and various practical reasons during manufacture, darts made of tungsten are not 100% pure. Heavy metal alloys made of tungsten and nickel are used: with nickel-iron and nickel-copper matrices being the most common. These heavy metal alloys allow for enhanced machinability and permit manufacturers of darts to offer products with higher rigidity, lower vibration, higher damping, and reduce thermal expansion properties.

The most common compositions available on the market are:

• 65% Tungsten – 35% Nickel

• 80% Tungsten – 20% Nickel

• 90% Tungsten – 10% Nickel

• 95% Tungsten – 05% Nickel

• 97% Tungsten – 03% Nickel

3.0 The Perfect Metal for A Dart

One of the most defining characteristics of tungsten metal and its alloys is its density. Tungsten density is almost twice that of lead and is comparable to that of uranium. For those of you who do not remember your high school science lessons, density is a function of mass and volume, which means that a substance with a high-density value can have a smaller size while maintaining the same mass. In laymen’s terms, if you have two objects of equal weight but with different densities, the denser object will also be the smaller. A 30-gram dart made of tungsten will be approximately half the diameter of a 30-gram dart made out of brass!

Some people will say that tungsten darts should not be recommended to beginners and that only advanced players and professionals benefit from the added control; however, anyone who is serious about getting better at the game should invest in tungsten darts from the get-go.

Even though tungsten darts are more costly to make and therefore a more expensive purchase, the benefits that this most important of metals provides cannot be easily dismissed.