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October 16th, 2019

Troubleshooting and Prevention of Cracking in Induction Hardening of Steels: Lessons Learned – Part 2

The final part of this two-part article continues a discussion on the subject of Induction Heating, providing additional troubleshooting tips and unveiling remedies to minimize a probability of cracking in industrial practice.

One of the most common applications of induction heat treatment is the hardening of steels, cast irons, and powder-metallurgy materials, developing an attractive blend of engineering properties. In some applications, it may be desirable to obtain a certain combination of hardness, wear resistance, and contact-fatigue strength at the surface or near-the-surface areas without affecting the core microstructure (e.g., surface hardening of gears and axle shafts). Other cases might require an increase of hardness and strength of the entire cross-section of the part, and induction through hardening can help to accomplish the desired industrial characteristics.

There are thousands of highly successful induction-hardening machines that produce millions of parts supplied to various industry segments. Among the components that routinely undergo induction hardening (IH) are such parts as camshafts, crankshafts, gears, sprockets, transmission shafts, ball studs, pins, toothed racks, wheel spindles, bearing races, fasteners, working tools, track shoes for earth-moving machines — the list is essentially endless. 

Part 1 of this series can be found here.
To read the full article on Part 2 of Troubleshooting and the Prevention of Cracking in Induction Hardening of Steels, click here or visit ThermalProcessing.com.