- Joined
- Mar 2, 2021
- Messages
- 44
This looks really nice.
I bought two 3" stainless steel threaded caps and a zero length coupler to make a reasonably tight crucible for my heat treat oven instead of using stainless steel foil. I have been packed carburizing surface hardening by crushing charcoal briquets and placing the powder/small chunks in the stainless steel pipe crucible. I think I'm getting about .060" RC 60 ish case on A36/1018 base material. After tempering, the parts are quite hard and are not brittle. A person does have some size change from the machined size, but it's fairly straight forward to guess about how much things will expand with the carburization process. I'm currently making a set of punches and dies for my Whitney 91 punch and my punches are every bit as good as the factory punches at a fraction of the price (not counting any labor or machine cost).
I need to look into a real hardness tester. I only have the files, which is probably "good enough" for my needs although I like numbers.
One more thing to look into is getting a temperature controlled bath. There are oil quench steels that have optimal bath temperatures. I'm lucky in that I found a small recirculating constant temperature bath (maybe 1/2 gallon)?) on the free table at the radio club.
I'm more of a limited meat ball heat treatment guy compared to the highly capable people on this forum. I do like case hardening though - it's actually really fun to get a polished, hard surface that "click" together from cheap, soft steel.
I bought two 3" stainless steel threaded caps and a zero length coupler to make a reasonably tight crucible for my heat treat oven instead of using stainless steel foil. I have been packed carburizing surface hardening by crushing charcoal briquets and placing the powder/small chunks in the stainless steel pipe crucible. I think I'm getting about .060" RC 60 ish case on A36/1018 base material. After tempering, the parts are quite hard and are not brittle. A person does have some size change from the machined size, but it's fairly straight forward to guess about how much things will expand with the carburization process. I'm currently making a set of punches and dies for my Whitney 91 punch and my punches are every bit as good as the factory punches at a fraction of the price (not counting any labor or machine cost).
I need to look into a real hardness tester. I only have the files, which is probably "good enough" for my needs although I like numbers.
One more thing to look into is getting a temperature controlled bath. There are oil quench steels that have optimal bath temperatures. I'm lucky in that I found a small recirculating constant temperature bath (maybe 1/2 gallon)?) on the free table at the radio club.
I'm more of a limited meat ball heat treatment guy compared to the highly capable people on this forum. I do like case hardening though - it's actually really fun to get a polished, hard surface that "click" together from cheap, soft steel.
Last edited:
