The Need

Manufacturers need a flexible way to improve the quality of local material regions without heavy, fixed tooling or shallow, low‑energy peening. Today’s options often deliver limited depth of improvement, struggle on complex shapes, and can overload robots or require rework. A practical solution should densify material, refine microstructure, reduce residual stress, and correct shape at useful scales, while fitting easily into robotic cells and covering areas quickly and consistently across different part types and materials.

The Technology

Dr. Glenn Daehn, Professor of Metallurgical Engineering at The Ohio State University, has developed a solution that pairs a robot with a compact hammer tool that delivers controlled, high‑energy impacts in overlapping patterns to treat a chosen area. Interchangeable tips are sized to the feature being improved, and simple software selects the hammer setup, impact level, and drive type (e.g., solenoid, pneumatic). Options include using two hammers to cancel reaction forces and a “free‑flight” strike that protects the robot. The result is meaningful local change (better density, surface, stress state, and fine dimensional tuning).

Commercial Applications

• Additive manufacturing: in‑process or post‑process improvement of bead quality, porosity, residual stress, and fatigue life.
• Welded structures: local strengthening and surface conditioning at weld toes and fillets.
• Castings/repairs: densification and shape touch‑up on hard‑to‑reach features.
• Dissimilar‑metal joints: localized property tailoring after joining and heat treatment.

Benefits/Advantages

• Deeper local improvement than conventional peening, with meaningful strain and densification.
• Robot‑friendly operation that minimizes forces transmitted to the arm.
• Fast, flexible tooling with tip sizes matched to real features and drive options to suit the job.
• Consistent, repeatable results via straightforward setup software for energy and strike patterns.