Thursday, March 28, 2024

Microstructural effect of Alloy 718 on fatigue strength

Gas turbine engines are widely used in aviation, power generation, and oil and gas industries. They are used in land, air, and marine. The...

Some workpieces are too large and expensive to fit into conventional benchtop hardness testers

Portable Rockwell Hardness Testing of Large Induction Hardened Work Pieces The previous article identified many factors related to benchtop Rockwell hardness testing practices. This article...

Achieving results through cold treatment

Cold treatment is a sub-zero thermal treatment process primarily used to reduce the retained austenite content of alloy and high carbon steels. Cold treatment...

Simulation tools to effectively calculate process

One common goal for a wide range of industries has been to increase power density in shaft and gear components. The steel producing industry...

Stress evolution during quench hardening of steel

Quench hardening of steel components involves complex, nonintuitive phenomena, particularly as it relates to the dimensional changes and stresses induced. Figure 1 shows a...

Different Scales Are Used For Rockwell Hardness Testing

Production Bench Rockwell Hardness Testing of Small Work Pieces As induction hardened workpieces get smaller in size, attention to the proper abrasive cutting of the...

Hardness scale conversion

The use of hardness testing as a quality control method to check the outcome of a thermal treatment process is a common application of...

Carburizing

While some heat treatments are used to soften the material or improve its machinability, most are processed to obtain strengthened or hardened properties. The...

Improving temperature uniformity during tempering

The final step in any steel heat-treatment quenching process which produces a martensitic microstructure is tempering. Martensite is a metastable phase and is extremely...

Determining austenite grain size

Grain size is a critical metallurgical characteristic, significantly influencing design parameters such as strength and toughness. Austenite grain size (often referred to as prior-austenite...

Variation in Hardenability

Many heat-treating processes cannot tolerate appreciable variations in steel hardenability. For an established in-control process, deviations in chemical composition and starting microstructure may result...

Linear-elastic fracture toughness testing

Materials fracture occurs in all sectors of the economy — aerospace, nuclear, medical, transportation, oil and gas, petrochemical, commercial and residential buildings, etc. The...

Compelling reasons normalizing produces high quality gears

In this day and age, adding steps to the gear manufacturing process is not highly desirable unless the benefits far outweigh the costs incurred....

Press quenching tooling design using simulation

Steel powertrain gears are commonly carburized and quench hardened to improve strength and wear characteristics. However, solid-state phase changes occurring within the steel during...

Combatting undesirable NMTP formations

Whether formed during a conventional quench and tempering process, carburizing, or induction hardening, non-martensitic transformation products (NMTP) are widely considered undesirable microstructural features. However,...

Important to consider carbide formation during simulation

Low pressure carburizing (LPC) processes are a popular choice in industry due to LPC’s reduced cycle time, lack of oxidation/decarburization at and near surface,...

Evaluating effect of heat treat on flank slope profile deviation of steel gears using...

The finish machining of a gear is undoubtedly one of the most important manufacturing steps. It sets the geometry, surface condition, and residual stress...

Hardening and tempering in the same cell

Tempering hardened steels is one of the most important heat treating processes used in part manufacturing. Induction tempering produces hardness and mechanical properties similar...

Carburizing Optimization & ECD Precise Control

As discussed in the September/October 2016 Metal Urgency column , carburizing is a nonsteady-state diffusion process and thus can be expressed by Fick’s second...

Accounting for carbon rejection can head off trouble

The heat treatment of steel alloys is required in almost every industry to acquire the necessary properties for a material given a particular application....