Heat Treating Best Practices

Typical hardening we use is somewhere around HRC 40-55 to about .004” - .015” deep, depending on
how thin the material is, how much stress is applied to it, etc. Keep in mind: dies are hardened to
around HRC 62.

When assigning heat treating values, keep in mind that:

- The idea is to maintain balance between hardness and toughness.
- We don’t want the material to deform, but we also don’t want it to fracture.
- The thicker the hardening, the harder and more brittle it becomes.
- The thinner the hardening, the softer and more ductile the material will remain.
- We need to consider contact components. All components rubbing/hitting a hardened part
should probably be hardened as well to minimize excess wear on the softer part.
- There is no formula to determine what surface hardness and depth we need for our parts, nor
do we have the proper equipment to determine what we need. They are mainly determined
based on what we’ve used historically.

To see examples of what heat treating was applied to our parts, do a PDM data card search and filter by
the different heat treating options. The drawings of the parts should mention both the HRC value along
with the hardening depth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_scale
https://www.woodcousa.com/conv_chart.htm