RAPID HEAT TREATMENT PROCESS USING MICROWAVES - A NOVEL APPROACH

摘要

Heat treatment is an essential process for steels especially to enhance the properties of tools. In conventional heat treatment process, the heat transfer through the material is normally by conduction and it results longer soaking time for complete austenitization. Present study deals with reducing the time consumption by rapid heating of steels using microwaves. In this paper, tungsten based high speed steel (T-1) and high carbon high chromium steels (D-2) were taken and heat treatment was done on it using both conventional and Microwave furnace in a protective environment. Hardness tests were conducted using Micro Vickers Hardness tester and equivalent Rockwell Hardness values were noted and microstructure analyses were also done on microwave heat treated specimen. The result shows that the time taken for microwave heating is very less on comparing with conventional heating without affecting the mechanical property.