They say you should never answer a question with a question, but in this post I’m going to have break that age-old truism.
Fortunately, the answer is usually: Yes! Induction heat treatment is a very versatile method of heat treat and has many applications. Induction heat treating is a very controllable process and usually the resultant distortion can be controlled much better than with other heat treat methods. Sometimes, though, I have questions of my own:
- Is your material a metal that be can be hardened?
- Is this material suitable for induction hardening? This can be a bit tricky as the material may have plenty of carbon, but the structure is not a suitable structure for induction hardening. Because the induction heat treatment process occurs very quickly, some materials will not go into “solution” quickly enough, and the heat treat ends up being spotty or just too soft.
- Is there proper carbon content? The material will only hardened to its maximum hardness based on the carbon content, this is mostly true regardless of the heat treat method used.
- Is the depth of hardness appropriate? Induction is best suited for shallower depths, it is by definition a “case hardening” process. As a general rule of thumb most of the higher alloy steels will allow a deeper case depth than regular carbon steel.
- What about bores, can I induction heat treat this bore? Usually the answer is, Yes! But some bores due to small size or geometry may prove to be difficult.
- Will the part weigh over 100 lbs? Typically, for Zion Induction, an Ohio based induction heating company, it is not a problem. They heat treat parts that weigh several hundred pounds, parts that weigh just a few grams, and everything in between.
