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The article deals with the matter of development of a prototype of fatigue test bench for fork type forging, with particular emphasis on the measurement-archiving application that allows to determine magnitude of moment of force and rotation angle in time. These forgings are used for steering columns and are a critical element of car safety. Due to the nature of the variability of loads applied to the element, its high fatigue strength is crucial, both in low and high-frequency cycles. For this reason, they require special quality control during production process, development of advanced manufacturing techniques and ensuring their repeatability. Unfortunately, in the case of matrix forges, no strength tests are carried out for these forgings, which means that after heat treatment, they may have different mechanical properties. The construction of the workstation is intended to enable conducting of fatigue strength tests. For its operation web application, was developed in Python (with the use of Flask library and SQLite database), which enables control, collection and analysis of data obtained during the process. Thanks to this, it is possible to execute set number of fatigue cycles, measuring the inflection angle and torque, and detecting cracking of the tested material. Further development of the station is planned in the future, in order to analyze the impact of the applied heat treatment on fatigue strength, creating added value for the end customer.
Keywords: Durability of yoke type forgings, development of a prototype fatigue bench© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.