Hardening is a metallurgical process which we use where we want to increse

the hardness of the metal at the expense of plasticity. Due to this, the metal is
more resistant to wear, erosion, and it doesn’t elongate as much when exposed
to tensile stress.
Types of hardening
We have 2 main types of hardening with and without the use of a heat.

To the type that doesn’t involve heat we can include

work hardening and shot -peening
The types that involve heat are
Quenching, tempering, precipitation hardening and case hardening

Of course there are many more types of the same process that differienties in
how it goes or how the end piece will behave but it would take too much time
to include all of these in this presentation.

Work hardening is a a metal working technique that in the process also hardens
the metal. The structure of the metal gets stronger because of the compression
we’re putting it under. The structure and atoms are closer together, making it
more coherent. In addition to that the pressure breaks down the grain into
smaller grains which also increses the strength of the metal. This result can be
achived also by rolling or hammering the workpiece. Which means we don’t
have to change the shape of the component in order to harden it.

Shot peening is a similar proces to work hardening, that means the reason why
the metal gets harder is the same. Shot-peening involves shooting small metal
balls at the Surface of a workpiece. Because of that only the top layer of the
material changes it’s properties, leaving the core more elastic which can be
beneficial in use of tools, making them last longer without breaking.

Quenching is a heat treatment technique. In short this process relies on heating

a metal to high, given for that type of material temperature (for steel it is 30-50
degrees above Ac3, ac1,3 line) and quickly cooling it by dipping it in water or
oil. After this we get a material that is much stronger but of course more brittle
than before. The microstructure we get after this is martensite or bainite, it
depends on how quickly we cooled the metal.

Tempering is an additional process that is done after Quenching in order to get

a bit more elastic and less brittle material. It involves reheating a workpiece to
high, but not as high as in quenching temperature. The temperature depends
on what type of tempering we want to do. We have high, medium and low
tempering. Since we’re focusing on hardness of a metal we’ll Focus more on
low tempering. With combination of quenching and low tempering we get a
process called heat hardening. It relivies the stress in the workpiece but at a
cost we have slightly more ductile material, which of course means it’s not as
hard as before, however it is still much stronger than not doing nothing.

precipitation hardening also called age hardening is very similar to tempering,

however the heat is maitained for much longer period of time, often reaching
days or weeks. It involves formation of fine precipitates within the metal matrix.
The precipitates formed during this process is what gives the metal it’s new
hardness. The product we recive at the end is much stronger than what we
could get with tempering. The strength i also dependend on how long we keep
the material in given teperature. Generally lower temperature in longer periods
of time gives us better results. Of course we can make the process be done in
few hours in higher temperaturę but it’ll have worse qualities than the one that
is maintained in low temperature for a few days. It’s mostly used in alluminium
and copper alloys instead of steel, but

case hardening is a process in which heat up the metal in a mixture of gases

(not in the air).
Examples of what these gases can contain is carbon, boron or nitrogen.
The exact processes in which we achive given layers on the Surface of the
material are in order, Carburizing, Boring and Nitriding. These elements form a
bond with the exposed atoms of the metal we want to case harden. Which
harden the outer layer of the work piece, it’s Surface hardened. Unfortunatelly
this type of heat treatment needs specialized type of furnace that can introduce
the atmosphere with previously mentioned elements.