Help with heat treating drill rod

[Liljoebrshooter]

A magnet held in a pair of vice grips. Open up the door and touch the magnet to the parts. Easy peasy.
Joe

 

[Weldingrod1]

Just wrap some SST wire around an old ceramic magnet and wave it near the part.

Sent from my SM-G715A using Tapatalk

 

[Kenneth Briody]

Hi guys, we just got a Paragon HT14D oven to heat treat some small tooling parts. I'm doing test with some oil hardening 1/4" drill rod (O-1 from what I can figure) which I have some small shafts I'll need to harden. I can't for the life of me get the small test parts to harden.

I've found a few different resources and they all seem to recommend 1450-1500F followed by a quench in 125-150F oil. The parts I'm testing with are about 2-3" long 1/4" diameter. I first tried going to 1200F for 30 minutes then to 1400F for 15 minutes. No go. Second attempt was 1200F for 30 then 1500F for 30. No go. I thought maybe they weren't heating properly as they were sitting on the bottom of the oven so I propped the last part up in the middle-ish of the oven (near the TC) on a piece of scrap steel tube and did 1200 for 30 and 1500 for 60. Nothing. The best result was with the 1200/30 - 1500/30 on the bottom of the oven, the 45HRC file doesn't cut but the 50 does.

The oil I'm using is Super Quenchfast high speed quenching oil.

From what I've seen these should be 63-65 post-quench and I'm clearly not getting that. I'm a complete noob for heat treating, what am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance.

You might try going back up to 1500 let it soak for 10 - 15 min let it cool back down to room temp in some vermiculite or wood ashs then go Head and bring it back to 1500 let soak for 10 mins then Quinch can't hurt to try

 

[benmychree]

I'd wonder if the material could be mis identified.