2008-06-11
Cost Effective Materials for Sinter Hardening Applications
Sinter hardening is a well established industrial process which combines sintering and quenching in one step, and thereby avoiding re-heating and quenching of parts. It is getting an ever increasing interest thanks to availability of cost effective low alloy steel powders, which realize a compromise between compressibility and hardenability, on one side, and to the development of continuous furnaces which allow cooling rates high enough to transform austenite into martensite in these low alloyed steels. In this paper both static and dynamic properties obtained with a number of cost effective low alloy steel powders after sinter hardening will be presented.