Experiment 6

EFFECT OF TEMPERING TEMPERATURE AND TIME ON PROPERTIES OF QUENCH HARDENED STEEL

Introduction Three types of steel will be used for this experiment that are low,medium and high carbon steels.All of these will be heated in a furnace at elevated temperature accordingly. Quenching treatment,sometimes called strengthening treatment makes the steel hard and brittle.Quenching refers to cooling from the temperature range of the solid solution at such a rate that transformations in the primary and bainite ranges are suppressed and martensite is formed. In this state, steels are characterized by the greatest hardness. In this experiment,it will use only normal quenching,which is used mainly for treatment of medium and high carbon steels.In this experiment as well,various quenching media will be used.Water,oil,brine and air will serve as cooling medium.Three types of steel are used, low,medium and high carbon steels.All of these will be heated in a furnace at elevated temperature.Tempering process will be use for quenched steel to remove residual stresses that iduced in the rapid cooling,steels later will becomes more softer,ductile and tougher than before the tempering process.

Procedures 1. Steel were selected and must containing more than 0.3% of carbon.Three types of steel were used,low ,mediu ,and high carbon steel. 2. The furnace temperature was set to 920C 3. The samples were placed in the furnace and heated up to 920 C.The heating process was continued at 920C to homogenize the composition. 1 hour usually is about 1 inch thickness. 4. Then,for each types of sample,one sample was left in the furnace to cool down slowly,called annealing process.Another one,was taken out from the furnace and place it on a refractory brick for normalizing process.The others samples then were removed one

by one and quenched in water for 4 samples,one sample were quenched into oil and brine respectively.Temperature was maintained along this process. 5. 1 mm from each surface of steels were removed in order to make sure that the oxidized and decaburized layer is removed.The samples than used standard techniques for microstructural investigation for metallograpic samples preparation 6. All samples then were measured their hardness using hardness machine 7. For part II,the furnace temperature was set to 600C for tempering process.This process only use specimens that were quenched in water. 8. The samples were placed in the furnace and heated up.The samples were only medium and high carbon steel. 9. Just after 1 hour,the samples were readily toremove from the furnace and were prepared for further microstructure examination as well as hardness. 10. The tempering process was repeated using different furnace temperature,500C,400C and 300C

Result

Discuusion

Suggestion/Recommendation

Conclusion.