Heat Treating Oil Hardening Steel

Hardening steel with motor oil is a way of performing what is called the case hardening of steel.

Heat treating oil hardening steel.

H 13 is an air hardening steel. The basics of oil quenching in heat treating. Quenchants should be at room temperature or slightly above. Small and medium sections of air hardening steel will.

Heat uniformly to 770 780 c until heated through. 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. As heattreated it is a nice plum color. How to heat treat steel.

Quenching oil serves two primary functions. It facilitates hardening of steel by controlling heat transfer during quenching. Updated january 09 2018. 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.

Pure steel is actually too soft for many applications. The prefix a in the name designates it as an air hardening steel. 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. Parts made of low carbon steel and low hardenability alloys quench better in fast oils.

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. Hardening allows for better wear and edge retention. The 44 is the rockwell hardness. 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 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. Never quench in cold oil. 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.

Always heat the oil up prior to quenching your project. Sizes up to 8mm or 5 16 dia may be oil hardened from 800 810 c. In this particular instance i m hardening a piece of silver steel that is to be used as a rivet punch. Heat an old bolt or scrap steel and use it to bring the solution up to temp.

This means it hardens rapidly compared to other tool steels making heat treatment potentially difficult. Hence it has a concave dome machined into one end. Our family machine shop used quite a bit of this material to avoid heat treating parts.