Heat Treating Oil Hardening Steel

How to heat treat steel.

Heat treating oil hardening steel. Parts made of low carbon steel and low hardenability alloys quench better in fast oils. Updated january 09 2018. O1 is a general purpose tool steel that is typically used in applications where alloy steels cannot provide sufficient hardness strength and wear resistance. As heattreated it is a nice plum color.

This steel is sold as die steel that is machinable just barely with ordinary machine tools. Obviously vacuum heat treating furnaces do not allow quenching outside of the furnace unless the vacuum furnace has been equipped with an attendant oil quenching zone. Hence it has a concave dome machined into one end. H 13 is an air hardening steel.

Hardening allows for better wear and edge retention. Our family machine shop used quite a bit of this material to avoid heat treating parts. This means it hardens rapidly compared to other tool steels making heat treatment potentially difficult. Heat treating or heat treatment is a group of industrial thermal and metalworking processes used to alter the physical and sometimes chemical properties of a material the most common application is metallurgical heat treatments are also used in the manufacture of many other materials such as glass heat treatment involves the use of heating or chilling normally to extreme temperatures.

Quenching oil serves two primary functions. It facilitates hardening of steel by controlling heat transfer during quenching. Pure steel is actually too soft for many applications. Never quench in cold oil.

In order to put a hard layer on the steel carbon must be fused at the molecular level into the top centimeter or so of the. Hardening steel with motor oil is a way of performing what is called the case hardening of steel. Quenching oil and heat treatment fluids are designed for rapid or controlled cooling of steel or other metals as part of a hardening tempering or other heat treating process. Heat uniformly to 770 780 c until heated through.

O1 tool steel is the original oil hardening non shrinking tool steel that can be hardened to the rockwell c 65 range from a low austenitizing temperature. I m hardening just the end that fits over the rivet. Always heat the oil up prior to quenching your project. In this particular instance i m hardening a piece of silver steel that is to be used as a rivet punch.

Monly hardened with an interrupted oil quench or quenched in hot quenching salt at 1000 degrees f followed by air cooling. The steel is composted of 1 percent carbon 3 percent silicon 6 percent manganese 5 3 percent chromium 1 1 percent molybdenum and 2 percent vanadium. Heat an old bolt or scrap steel and use it to bring the solution up to temp. The prefix a in the name designates it as an air hardening steel.

The basics of oil quenching in heat treating. Quenchants should be at room temperature or slightly above. One of the most critical parts in the heat treatment of a metal part is the quench or the rapid cooling of the part to achieve specified properties.