Rail Wheel Factory (RWF) - A Manufacturing Unit of Indian Railways - PDF

5 Introduction Rail Wheel Factory (RWF) is a manufacturing unit of Indian Railways, producing wheels, axles and wheel sets of railroad wagons, coaches and locomotives for the use of Indian Railways and overseas customers is situated at Yelahanka, Bangalore in the Indian...

5 Introduction Rail Wheel Factory (RWF) is a manufacturing unit of Indian Railways, producing wheels, axles and wheel sets of railroad wagons, coaches and locomotives for the use of Indian Railways and overseas customers is situated at Yelahanka, Bangalore in the Indian state of Karnataka. The RWF was founded in the year 1984. It was formerly known as Wheel and Axle plant but since it came under the Indian railway ministry board, it was renamed Rail wheel Factory afterwards. The unit was started by C. K. Jaffer Sharief, the then Railway Minister, who got this project to Bangalore. It was commissioned to manufacture wheels and axles for the Indian Railways. This factory uses cast steel technology in the manufacturing of wheels which utilizes scrap steel collected from Railways' own workshops as raw material. The products that are manufactured at RWF are wheels, Axles and wheel sets. They are engineered with little scrap for human errors. It has a planned capacity to manufacture of about 2,00,000 wheels of different sizes, 1,00,000 axles and to assemble 70,000 wheel sets. It was the first unit of Indian Railways to receive ISO 9001:2008 accreditation.  6 RWF is successfully meeting the requirement of wheels of wagon builders and loose wheels. A wheel is cast every 1.5 minutes. Wheels are cast by controlled pressure pouring process. The technology for this was obtained from M/s. Griffin Wheel Co., USA. In this process, the raw material used is scrap which consist old used Wheel sets, axles, parts of Rail bogie etc; that are rejected as unfit for use by the Railways. The scrap steel is melted in Electric Arc furnace. The correct chemistry of molten metal steel is ensured through a Spectrometer. The wheels are eventually cast in the graphite moulds, which are pre-heated and sprayed. After allowing for a pre-determined setting time, the mould is split and the risers are automatically separated from the cast wheel. The wheel then undergoes the process of heat treatment, Cleaning, Magnaglo testing, Ultrasonic testing, Peening and various stages of inspection. The wheel produced by this process requires no machining except the precision boring of central hole (hub) where the axle has to be fitted. RWF produces an axle every five minutes. The Plant converts steel blooms to axles through a series of forging, heat treatment and machining processes. Blooms cut to the required sizes are heated in Rotary Hearth Furnace up to 1200 degree C. These are carried to the precision Long Forging machine where the hammers convert billets into the required shapes through CNC. The Forging Machine having multiple hammers is used to get required sizes of forgings. After end cutting, the rough forged axles are subjected to heat treatment in normalizing and tempering furnaces. Rail Wheel Factory is having two axle machining lines which are CNC machines to convert these forgings to the axle. RWF converts BOX N, Coaching and Container Axles to wheel sets. Loco axles are  7 generally sent in rough turned condition to the Production Units and Railways workshops for converting to wheel sets. RWF is having a highly automated wheel set assembly complex supplied by M/s. Simmons Machine Tool Corporation, USA. Wheel seat sizes of machined axles are measured and wheels received from wheel shop are bored according to this size. The precision borers ensure that the final bores have required interference with the individual axles. After boring, the wheels are carried through automated conveyors to the assembly complex along with axles and wheels are pressed one after another. The force required in pressing the wheels is recorded automatically to ensure that the pressing force is within the laid down limits. Every product of RWF is manufactured to customer’s requirements and each product is inspected and tested to ensure a longer life and reliability. Since most machining process is automated, it leaves very little room for human error.