Induction Heating Technology for Part Hardening and Tempering Process
In the industry, the various components usually have to be heat-treated just to be adapted for the working conditions. After heat treatment, the various microstructure, hardness, tensile strength, yield strength will greatly improved. Therefore, heat medication is a critical process during parts processing.
Heat treatment can includes hardening, tempering, annealing, normalizing etc, which is applied for the manufacturing process much like different working condition requirements. Here we will discuss what equipment can be used as hardening and tempering process. Compared with conventional method, induction heating technology has many perks for the heat treatment process of hardening and tempering.
Induction heating provides several advantages for manufacturing processes because it’s a fast, energy-saving, flameless means of heating conductive materials. Typical systems include inductive power source, inductor with copper coil and cooler or cooling unit. The current flows with the coil to provide an electromagnetic alternating magnetic field. When the conductive parts they fit inside the coil, you will see electric current passing through. The electric energy is and also the resistance manifestation of the conductive part to get heat.
Then what’s the benefit of induction heating for hardening and tempering of steel?
1.Flexibility
Induction furnace doesn’t need preheating some time to show-down time for your machines, you’ll be able to start or stop the machine depending on your production need.
In almost all of case, the pad in different size and grade need to be tempered at different tempering temperature. But the conventional machines is tough to achieve temperature adjustment. If the bars or tubes are heated with the high temperature for some time, the steel will probably be decarbonizing. On the contrary, induction warming achieve different temperature adjustment, which can be controlled by power output. This is very necessary for reaching different grade demand for different grade bars or tubes.
2.Uniformity in hardness and structure
The steel microstructure could have following changes together with the heat treatment process: Ferrite-Austenite- Martensite, Sorbide. But only the steel get homogeneous cooling and heating, then your structure might be changed homogeneously. If it cannot transformed completely, then this hardness, toughness and tensile strength is going to be effected, thus leading that the content can not satisfy the actual application requirement. In the induction furnace, all of the heating temperature will probably be monitored and controlled, therefore the structure will probably be transformed well and gaze after stable state.