Beruflich Dokumente
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Background
Heat treatment has changed beyond recognition since the first simple annealing and hardening cycles were discovered empirically hundreds of years ago. These changes have been driven by a better understanding of the underlying science, increasing demand for products and quality requirements, and latterly, social factors such as environmental considerations. In addition, the market has been shaped by technological developments, such as the changing use of materials and advances in manufacturing techniques, which have opened up new opportunities. Hardening The simplest process to benefit from technological progress is hardening. Although the vacuum furnace has existed for many years and pressure quenching is common, the latest generation of intelligent furnaces incorporate rapid controlled quenching with minimum component distortion. Step quenching can be carried out and process times are kept to a minimum by using convective as well as radiant heating during the cycle. Quench gas recovery systems also keep costs down and offer environmental benefits. Case Hardening Case hardening has evolved from using solid to liquid, and now, usually, gas as the enrichment source, but the next generation of technology uses vacuum, or plasma. The benefits are similar to those gained from plasma nitriding. However, work has to be done to introduce new materials to maximise the benefit of the new technology. Nitriding Changing from traditional gas nitriding to plasma nitriding will bring a host of benefits, including better control of the process and increased material types and product shapes that can be effectively treated. Ammonia is no longer used in the process and cycle times are shorter, so there are energy savings as well as environmental benefits. An increase in processing efficiency also follows from the shorter processing time. Nitrocarburising and Oxynitrocarburising The advent of low temperature heat treatment processes, such as nitrocarburising and oxynitrocarburising, also offers many more options to treat components and tools, with very low risks of distortion or post-processing machining.
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Laser Hardening Laser hardening is a very efficient way of locally hardening large tools, producing virtually no distortion, dramatically increasing tool life, and, interestingly, borrowing much of its technology from the CAD/CAM used to make the tool. Compared with the alternative of flame hardening, it is light years ahead. Laser technology is also being used for surface modification, to replace shot peening in certain applications. Hard Coatings Another environmentally friendly technology gaining market share is hard coating. Even using the most skilled heat treater, it is often more cost-effective to treat or coat limited load bearing areas, rather than the entire tool or component. While there are heat treatment techniques to do this, plating and hard coating offer alternatives. Plating still has environmental problems, so the environmentally friendly technologies of hard coating provide viable alternatives. Hard Coating Materials and Technologies Coatings such as titanium nitride (TiN) and chromium nitride (CrN) are evolving as much as alloy steels evolved in the 20th century. Complex coatings such as titanium aluminium nitride (TiAlN) or titanium aluminium boron nitride (TiAlBN) are already being applied, and combinations with other elements such as yttrium are being researched. Multi-layer coatings, in which the composition changes throughout the coating, have been developed to maximise mechanical properties of the layer. Not only the coating, but also the deposition method can be matched to the application, and the three main deposition methods of electron beam, arc and magnetron all have their strengths and weaknesses. Of course, coatings can be applied to polymer surfaces, and while this has been mainly used for decoration so far, there are many potential engineering applications.
Figure 1. Titanium nitride coating (gold) achieves substantial wear reductions on aircraft components.
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Carbon Coatings Carbon, with its allotropy, has a unique part to play in surface engineering, since coatings can be applied with varying amounts of diamond for wear resistance and graphite for lubricity. This technology, together with ion implantation, will surely be developed to enable wholesale commercial coating of polymers in the near future. Ion Implantation These hard processes operate at between 350C-450C, and their fine finish allows them to be applied to finished parts while maintaining design tolerances. However, in the case of polymers and certain steels, these temperatures are not low enough to totally avoid all undesirable material changes and distortion risks. Here, the relatively new technology of ion implantation offers significant benefits. Under vacuum at temperatures of less than 200C, ions such as nitrogen can diffuse into the surface layers of metals and plastics to produce a very hard, but very thin layer, to extend product life or increase lubricity.
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