Experiment 3 (High carbon steel Heat treatment)

Procedure :
You are provided with 8 specimens of steel for your study.

1- Measure the hardness of all specimens.

2- Heat all specimens in furnace at 880ºC for ½ hour.
3- Remove one specimen and cool it in air on a brick.
4- Remove one specimen and cool it in oil
5- Remove one specimen and cool it in water
6- Turn off the furnace , allow one sample to remain in the furnace for one hour.
7- The air-cooled and furnace-cooled specimens can be cooled in water after one hour.
8- Remove remainig four specimen and quickly drop them into brine solution (water+salt);
the transfer should take less than one second. A little rehearsal could help. Be careful not
to touch the specimens before they are cooled in brine solution.
9- Temper three specimens of the quenched for 30 minutes at the 320 ºC, 450 ºC, 560 ºC.
After tempering, the specimens can be cooled in water.
10- Mesure hardness of all samples using the Rockwell machine (take four measures for
each specimen and calculate the average).
11- Grind and polish all samples and use the appropriated solution(4% HNO3 + 96% water)
to reveal the microstructure.