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What is metal hardness?
Hardness is the degree to which a metal resists being deformed
either through bending, buckling, warping, or wear over
time. Measured by different scales such as Brinell, Vickers
and Rockwell, a metal’s hardness is crucial in determining
a product’s ability to endure repeated or high-intensity
impact, consistent wear and tear, or other corrosive and
damaging conditions.
Why harden?
There are many reasons why hardening can
be crucial to a product’s functionality or marketability.
Manufacturers may require hardening to
ultimately increase a product’s:
• Durability and strength
• Resistance to shock and impact
• Resistance to wear by friction or erosion
Resistance to exposure
One of the most common causes of erosion is a metal’s
consistent exposure to steam, water and other corrosive
substances. For this reason, hardening
is particularly beneficial to manufacturers in the aerospace
and defense, power
generation, automotive
and agriculture and food
production industries, where equipment and products
are frequently exposed to these substances and are expected
to consistently carry out repeated cycles.
Quality’s hardening services
Typically, hardening involves heating metal to a specific
temperature and then cooling it in a medium such as oil
or water. Beyond this basic process, Quality Steel Treating
(QST) performs specific hardening services including:
• Bright Hardening that eliminates
oxidation and retains the metal’s surface color.
• Precipitation Hardening to create
strong aluminum, nickel, cobalt and copper-based alloys.
Nitriding to improve
results
Production may sometimes require low-carbon alloy steel,
a metal that can be easily shaped and machined, but that
wears quickly and deforms easily. Once production is complete,
the low-carbon alloy steel may require hardening. One way
to case harden metal is through nitriding, which induces
nitrogen (or a combination of nitrogen and carbon) (FNC)
into the steel’s surface. The metal can then be hardened
by heat treatment. Compared
to other case hardening processes, nitriding
creates steels with:
• Higher surface hardness
• Extreme resistance to abrasion
• High fatigue strength
normalizing
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