Aluminum Alloy Wheel Air Tightness Testing Machine

The machine seals the wheel rim hydraulically from both sides, pressurizes it with compressed air at 0.5–0.6 MPa, and lowers it completely into water. As the wheel rotates through two full turns, operators visually inspect every surface for escaping air bubbles — reliably catching hairline cracks, weld porosity, and structural defects that pressure-decay methods can miss.

A 125 mm bore oil cylinder delivers up to 850KN of squeezing force (16-ton max) to seal the wheel against both platens. The dual-side compression design accommodates varying wheel widths quickly, and the multi-point lifting bracket adjusts via knobs to centralize wheels of different diameters up to 26″, minimizing changeover time between SKUs.

The testing tank is welded from 20 mm thick steel plate, lined internally with stainless steel, and undergoes post-weld polishing and annealing. Critical bore holes and sealing surfaces are finished on a large machining center, delivering the dimensional precision and pressure integrity required for repeatable, leak-free test cycles over years of production use.

The Siemens-compatible PLC core drives automatic, manual, and reset operating modes through a touchscreen HMI. The system automatically records process control parameters for each test cycle, performs fault self-diagnosis, and logs alarms with on-screen cause analysis and corrective guidance — supporting quality audits and integration with factory MES via a built-in data transmission interface.

Each wheel completes the full sequence — load, seal, pressurize, submerge, rotate, inspect, drain, and unload — in 35–45 seconds with air consumption of approximately 0.25 m³ per piece. Combined with the 4KW hydraulic station operating at 7–15 MPa, the machine balances thorough inspection with the pace demanded by high-output wheel manufacturing lines.