Apparatus for improving surface quality of rotary machine parts

Claim 1

In an apparatus for improving the surface quality of a rotary machine part comprising means for positioning a rotary machine part for rotation about an axis, means for rotating said part at a constant angular velocity, means for irradiating a surface of the rotary machine part with a high density beam to obtain a rapidly solidified layer and a transformation-hardened layer, and means for condensing said high density beam, and means for controlling the intensity of said beam, the improvement wherein; said condensing means comprises means for condensing said high density beam for effecting a spatial intensity distribution thereof of parallelpiped shape and for collimating said high density beam to a rectangular form in cross section and for causing the density of said beam to be uniform, and wherein said means for controlling the intensity of said beam comprises means for controlling the height of the parallelpiped spatial intensity distribution of said beam such that the surface of said rotary part melts and rapidly solidifies, whereby the surface quality of the rotary machine part is improved with the rapidly solidified layer and transformation-hardened layer of said surface portion being uniform without pitting and/or cracking.