WIDIA Sponsors King of the Hammers
Extreme Challenges. Extreme Results. This event’s first sponsor outside of the racing industry brought powerful tooling support to extreme desert racing’s premier event.
Posted: March 8, 2013
The WIDIA Rock Racer was unveiled at IMTS 2012 and made its Ultra4-class debut at KOH 2013. With driver David Buchberger, the company sponsored one of its own, since David also serves as vice president of Hi-Speed Corp. (Thousand Oaks, CA), a distributor of WIDIA-brand products and services.
“Our theme is “Extreme Challenges – Extreme Results, and nowhere is that better exemplified than in Ultra4 racing in general and David in particular,” says Bernie McConnell, the vice president of WIDIA Products Group and Services. “We’re very proud of this sponsorship and look forward to connecting with a whole new demographic of racing “fanatics” that machine components, fabricate parts, and assemble race cars. Our tooling can help these teams face any challenge in the shop and come through with a strong performance, just like David’s Ultra4 Rock Racer.”
Parts Never Seen Before
Buchberger believed his tools gave him the opportunity to be both. “I was able to get parts made I could only dream about before,” he says. For example, he and his team designed and built a custom adapter between the transfer case and the transmission out of 6061 T6 aluminum. Re-splining the 8620 case-hardened output shaft on a mill-turn machine was very challenging.
Milling also helped benefit the frame components of the Buchberger racer. Where most fabricators weld different material thicknesses together in the search of the perfect balance between light weight and high strength, Buchberger was able to take bars of cold-rolled 1018 steel, a grade known for a good balance of strength and ductility, and mill truss components down to 0.040 in honeycomb, resulting in a very strong, yet light component.
“To be honest, I was incredibly humbled by all their support,” Buchberger says. “Racing like that was raw awesome, but it takes an incredible amount of time and resources. With their tooling, know-how, and support, we brought a top-shelf car to an event that’s the biggest it’s ever been and still growing astronomically.”
Like any extreme event, simply qualifying and being one of the racers taking part in KOH is an amazing feat. To further showcase their tooling prowess, Buchberger and WIDIA machined the aluminum participation plaques that each race team received at this year’s event. “This year was the first time these plaques were machined/milled using our tooling,” Buchberger says, noting that they were “way cooler” than past models.
“I’m really proud of the car, how competitive it was, and how outside-the-box it was,” noted Buchberger. The recorded race footage and all other can’t-miss KOH coverage is available at www.ultra4racing.com.
WIDIA-brand products and services have defined innovation in the metal-cutting industry for more than 80 years — from the world’s first patent for carbide indexable inserts to the development of the world’s first coated grades.
A complete portfolio of precision-engineered products and custom solution services includes products for thousands of milling, turning, holemaking, and tooling systems, all available through a worldwide network of authorized distributor partners who carry full-line solutions from a single source. www.widia.com
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