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From its humble beginnings in the late 1940’s in Chennai, formerly Madras, and as part of the British Leyland organization, Ashok Leyland began a journey which has led to global success in the transport solutions industry.
Eight out of ten metro state transport buses in India are from Ashok Leyland, and at 70 million passengers a day, Ashok Leyland buses carry more people than the entire Indian rail network!
Ashok Leyland manufactures a large range of trucks, buses, special application vehicles, and engines. They carry out mechanical testing in their modern Materials Engineering Division of their technical centre. Recently they wanted to replace their existing Zwick hardness testing equipment in order to add greater flexibility whilst further reducing the measurement uncertainty and test time. In addition, they needed to issue traceable certificates of calibration and conformity.
The main challenge was the additional requirement to test a wide range of case hardened, sectioned components of many different sizes on one hardness tester. Although the load requirement using Vickers scales from 25 gf to 2 kgf was not a problem the wide range of specimen sizes meant that that the standard Vickers hardness machine was just too small for the application. After visits to the customer and detailed discussions regarding the application Indentec, Zwick’s specialist hardness testing division, were able to find a unique and perfect solution. They developed an extended version tester with 250 mm vertical daylight, 150 mm throat depth, and additional tooling to support the components.
Ashok Leyland is now able to ensure that its measurement parameters meet international standards, and are traceable to the National Physical Laboratory in England, through Indentec’s ISO 17025 UKAS approved hardness laboratory.
The easy-to-use and automatic system enables them to check both their own production, and the quality of incoming materials from suppliers, which will definitely lead to an increase in the quality of the final product.
Zwick is pleased to have been a supplier to Ashok Leyland in a relationship, which has spanned many years and has benefited both organisations.
Since the establishment of a joint venture agreement in 2004, Zwick has firmly established its own presence in India. Offering a unique product range combined with an excellent package of localised support in major cities, Zwick is already achieving its goal of getting much closer to its Indian customers.
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