DIY Rocklinizer!?

[C-Bag]

While cruising a metal forming forum I ran onto something I’d never heard of but have seen the effects of on tooling. The Rocklinizer takes a proprietary power supply and special gun with a carbide tip and through arcing onto the work leaves a stippled finish of carbide onto the work. This is used for all kinds of metal working from ruggedizing a surface like the jaws of a lathe to fixing dies to treating the jaws of Lancaster type shrinker stretchers and many other things just to name a few. A used Rocklinizer if you see them are $2,000+. New I’m afraid to ask and as a hobby guy I’m certainly not going “get a quote”.

in this thread one guy replied he’d used them 35yrs ago and figured he could DIY one with some kind of battery or 12v power supply and an typical engraver. I’ve asked him for details as has says it should be a variable power supply and depending on the setting and the polarity you get different finishes. He also says the DIY engraver/Rocklinizer doesn’t work as fast as a real one, but is certainly more potentially more affordable. But not being really and electronics kinda guy I have no clue as to the details of this.

Any thoughts?

 

[ddillman]

https://www.travers.com/the-carbidizer-tungsten-carbide-applicator/p/57-101-000/ is it something like this?

 

[C-Bag]

Looks like it, it’s the same engraver that I bought. But at basically $500 I won’t be buying one any time soon.

 

[markba633csi]

My guess is it's not especially powerful but probably high frequency pulses like a tesla coil?
Must be a shallow layer judging from the size of the power supply
Kind of expensive you're right
-M

 

[darkzero]

I have a Bebe Tung Carb carbidizer that I use for carbidizing titanium. It's the same one that Travers sells. I learned about it through the knife world. Doesn't perform as well as the Rocklinizer but for less than $200 for the Bebe compared to a few $K for the Rocklinizer there was no way I was going to buy a Rocklinizer for hobby use.

 

[darkzero]

Wow, Travers is charging $470 for the Tung Carb these days! Holy crap, I forget but I think paid like $160 or $180 for mine new but that was quite a while ago. Knife maker suppliers usually sold them for cheaper, I just checked & even their prices are currently $350.

 

[benmychree]

Where I apprenticed back in the '60s, they tried one out on drills used in production; the results were not particularly spectacular, and they did not buy one. A solution in search of a problem.

 

[C-Bag]

High end shrinker/stretcher use this process to deposit carbide on the jaws. A typical Lancaster S/S has like file teeth to grip the metal. It works good but leaves heavy marking as you can imagine so not good to use in an are that is seen. The Rocklinizer stipple on jaws works good on aluminum and thin steel and leaves far less damage. They are also used to build up and repair molds.

I don’t see how the process would be good for drill bits. I have a couple of other things I would try it out on to make a now slick surface grip. The DIY guy said something like $40 but was vague on details. What kind of 12v DC power supply other than a car battery could tolerate being basically shorted many times a second when using an engraver?

 

[C-Bag]

This is what an older unit looks like:

 

[darkzero]

What kind of 12v DC power supply other than a car battery could tolerate being basically shorted many times a second when using an engraver?

I never paid attention to what they use but if you search carbidizer in knife forums you should still be able to find threads on guys making their own. I remember seeing quite a few of them.

They were popular amongst knife makers for carbizing the lock bar face on titanium lock bars as well as carbidizing the edge for titanium blades. Titanium alloys don't make for great knife blades due to very poor wear resistance & is why they carbidize them to help but some people like to make them. These days many knife makers have switched to steel insert lock bar faces so not sure if many knife makers still use carbidizers anymore.