Heat treating steel?

[jimski...@gmail.com]

Anyone have experience with this? Does the space have equipment that could do it? This would be on fairly small parts - about 3 - 4 inches max length, maybe smaller. This would be to harden some cut to shape punches for aluminum sheet metal.

[EschewObfuscation]

On Friday, September 9, 2016 at 6:18:43 AM UTC-5, jimski...@gmail.com wrote:

Anyone have experience with this?  Does the space have equipment that could do it?  This would be on fairly small parts - about 3 - 4 inches max length, maybe smaller.  This would be to harden some cut to shape punches for aluminum sheet metal.

This question has arisen within the last few months, and there was little interest in implementing this. So... turns out one of my neighbors had a computer virus *and* a small ceramics kiln she had no use for... So I'll, at some point, be setting up a thermocouple and PID to do exactly this. At my house.  

AR has a similar small kiln I'm sure is capable of the required temperatures, but you'd be on your own adding the required controls. I do not know if the AR kiln has actually been fired up for any purpose since its acquisition.

[EschewObfuscation]

PS At that time, I did a little online shopping and decided that about $100 would buy a suitable thermocouple and PID controller. Should you choose to undertake that as a project, I'd be willing to contribute a 3 or 4 pole contactor more than sufficient for the purpose.

[Myles Farrell]

Jim,

We do have this capability at the shop. we can harden it using the forge and I have experience tempering them by eye/color in the forge. If you would like more control over the tempering we do have the glass annealing kiln which is programmable, but it hasn't been hooked up yet.

On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 8:40 AM, EschewObfuscation <google...@mailfilter.33mail.com> wrote:

PS At that time, I did a little online shopping and decided that about $100 would buy a suitable thermocouple and PID controller. Should you choose to undertake that as a project, I'd be willing to contribute a 3 or 4 pole contactor more than sufficient for the purpose.

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[Amberly Brown]

Wait, we have a glass annealing kiln? I've made beads, but I've never annealed any of them....where might this wonder be hiding at the space??

Amberly

P.S. Sorry for the thread hijack!

On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 8:52 AM, Myles Farrell <mylesmich...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jim,

We do have this capability at the shop. we can harden it using the forge and I have experience tempering them by eye/color in the forge. If you would like more control over the tempering we do have the glass annealing kiln which is programmable, but it hasn't been hooked up yet.

On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 8:40 AM, EschewObfuscation <googlegroups@mailfilter.33mail.com> wrote:

PS At that time, I did a little online shopping and decided that about $100 would buy a suitable thermocouple and PID controller. Should you choose to undertake that as a project, I'd be willing to contribute a 3 or 4 pole contactor more than sufficient for the purpose.

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[Myles Farrell]

We do. I stumbled upon a free kiln on craigslist this spring. It hasn't been hooked up yet, but she said it worked when they moved it to their basement. Programmable up to 2200 degrees, inside dimensions roughly 16"wx10"dx8"h. I figured we could use it for glass, precious metal casting, and heat treating. I'd say it was being used as an impromptu forge and the brick is in really rough shape, but still a good find. It is against the east wall in the metal shop on a table with the kiln. Please note DO NOT USE IT on this table. They are sitting on a wood table for now so we could get everything in place and evaluate the proposed layout of the shop. My eventual plan is to go to the breaker yard north of downtown and see if I can get some chunks of barge deck plate to make more metal shop tables. There are pictures on the equipment page of the website if you want to look.

On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 2:15 PM, Amberly Brown <amb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Wait, we have a glass annealing kiln? I've made beads, but I've never annealed any of them....where might this wonder be hiding at the space??

Amberly

P.S. Sorry for the thread hijack!

On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 8:52 AM, Myles Farrell <mylesmich...@gmail.com> wrote:

Jim,

We do have this capability at the shop. we can harden it using the forge and I have experience tempering them by eye/color in the forge. If you would like more control over the tempering we do have the glass annealing kiln which is programmable, but it hasn't been hooked up yet.

On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 8:40 AM, EschewObfuscation <google...@mailfilter.33mail.com> wrote:

PS At that time, I did a little online shopping and decided that about $100 would buy a suitable thermocouple and PID controller. Should you choose to undertake that as a project, I'd be willing to contribute a 3 or 4 pole contactor more than sufficient for the purpose.

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[Amberly Brown]

Awesome. I'll have to check it out the next time in the shop. I'd love to do a small batch anneal of some beads to test it out.

Amberly

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/arch-reactor/CAMh%3DfbMXbbqkajFOq_bEJMg6cQH_u84m3D6sF22SYk8v7EB0NA%40mail.gmail.com.

[EschewObfuscation]

On Friday, September 9, 2016 at 2:15:32 PM UTC-5, Amberly Brown wrote:

Wait, we have a glass annealing kiln? I've made beads, but I've never annealed any of them....where might this wonder be hiding at the space??

Amberly

I too had no clue we had this resource, it wasn't mentioned during the original discussion, must post date it; good thing I didn't expend scarce resources replicating this! 

[jimski...@gmail.com]

I will have to do some more reading up on this. I am hoping to mill out some shapes and have minimal scaling and distortion in the heat treat. Oven treatment has issues with scale from what I have read, at least without a controlled atmosphere although there are some coatings to help or wrapping in stainless foil. Not sure how they do heat treated punches and such - think they are made slightly oversize, heat treated, and then ground to final size. Apparently some material such as o-1 can be heat treated quickly by heating with a torch and then quenching. I am guessing the quick heating will have less scale. (and after heat treating there is an anealing step to reduce the hardness a bit to make it less brittle) Would be very interested in what others can tell me about this...

[EschewObfuscation]

The general procedure is a high heat followed by sharp quench to develop hardness. It also leaves the metal glass brittle. So then it's followed by a lower, slower heat for stress relief, which is slow cooled.

Lots of methods to avoid scale. Stainless foil as you mentioned, sometimes pack the foil envelope with charcoal as a reducing agent. Another method is dip in clay slip to create a conformal coating before heating. A trickle of inert gas into the envelope, nitrogen or argon are also possible. Depending on required precision, a final grinding is indeed one of the techniques (sometimes) used. Not all tooling requires that precision, so no point in gilding the lily if your requirement isn't that tight.

[jimski...@gmail.com]

Here's a nice video, IMHO, of similar to what I want to do. He doesn't give temp of torch heating or what oil he used but otherwise quite a bit of detail. The quick heat phase limits the scale. Might not work as easily on other steel alloys but for this no kiln is needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmj42zD8yEs

[jimski...@gmail.com]

Here is what I want to make but bigger...

http://www.rockford-industrial.com/Packing-and-Shipping-Supplys-/Loves-Park-/Diacro-roper-whitney-radius-corner-trimming-punch-die.HTML

[EschewObfuscation]

That guy has some nice tools, and unlike some youtubers, he uses them properly.

I'll point out a detail: notice how he runs the torch oxygen deprived, so the tip of the flame remains orange/yellow? Doing that creates a reducing environment in that zone, which helps with the oxidation issue.

I expect he could have dished the punch first, before hardening, thus avoiding the grinding step though. But since he obviously already had the grinder, didn't matter I spose.

Overall, good catch. :)