Case Hardening
Process
Case hardening is a generic term generally used to describe Carburising or Carbonitriding of steel, to produce a component with a hard wearing surface and depending on the material used, a tough core.
Carburising is achieved by raising the steel to temperatures of 860-920’C in a carbon rich
atmosphere. Typically the final surface carbon is in the range of 0.65-0.8% carbon. Carbonitriding is used on low grade steels such as ‘mild steel’ where iron nitrides are formed to achieve a high surface hardness
Processing Equipment
At AMTS the bulk of the case hardening is processed in Sealed Quench furnaces, often referred to as ‘Integral Quench Furnaces’. One of the advantages for the customer of using sealed quench furnaces, is that the quench tank is also under atmosphere so that the components appear clean and bright without any scale formation.
A sealed quench furnace can be used for a wide variety of components and processes. Our largest unit’s useful dimensions are 1800 x 1200 x 900 and can handle up to 1600 kilograms in a single load.
Quality Assurance & Customer Service
The latest in atmosphere detection and control systems are used to ensure that each batch conforms to the required standard. Careful control of the processing atmosphere allows us to product high quality predictable and repeatable case structures.
Furnace conditions are automatically logged to a central computer and cross referenced to all relevant Process Control sheets. Samples of each job are checked by skilled personnel.
As always we ask that you involve AMTS at the planning stage of a project so that we can help you achieve the best and most economic results.