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Laser Heat Treatment
Laser Cladding Services, Perth offers a range of laser heat treatment services, such as laser case hardening of shafts and mining tooling. It is especially well suited to hardening of components where only certain areas of a part need to obtain surface hardness, while the remainder of the part needs to stay in its un-hardened state. This is not achievable with traditional hardening methods such as furnace, flame or induction hardening, as the whole part gets heated. Laser heat treatment (also known as laser surface hardening) will obtain approximately 10 Rockwell C higher hardness than any other hardening method available on the market today. It achieves this by focusing a well defined beam of intense laser light on the component to be laser heat treated, combined with rapid self-quenching. Using a combination of controlled rapid travel speed and beam-focusing optics, the laser head scans over the component, rapidly heating the component's surface to a temperature just below its melting point. Due to this rapid travel speed heat is suddenly conducted away from the heated area, and the bulk heat capacity of the material being hardened typically acts as a heat sink, resulting in a self-quenching effect achieving very high hardness.
This high cooling rate of the component being laser hardened suppresses carbon diffusion, therefore transforming the material partially or completely into martensite. Laser heat treatment increases wear resistance and can under certain conditions increase the components fatigue strength, due to the compressive stresses induced on the components surface. Laser hardening of steel components can typically yield a 10 to 20% greater hardness than conventional heat treating methods. Laser heat treatment is suitable for carbon and alloy steels with greater than 0.3% carbon content. Call or email Laser Cladding Services to discuss your laser heat treatment requirements. |
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