Metal hardening

Advantages of hardening

Hardening not only offers decisive advantages, but is also indispensable depending on the performance requirements, especially for industrial components that are subject to permanent high mechanical loads, such as drive parts or gear wheels.

Advantages of hardening industrial components:

• higher resistance
• improved wear resistance
• significantly higher component load capacity
• improved overload tolerance
• more wear-resistant surface
• increased fatigue strength and longer service life
• improved reliability and performance

Possible hardening processes

Our in-house production processes also include our possible methods for hardening components:

Case hardening

Carburizing - hardening/quenching - tempering: Adjustment of the carbon content of the component by carburizing. Creation of the optimum or desired martensite structure in the atomic material structure by quenching (hardening). Building up the required ductility through appropriate tempering.

Annealing

Heating, heating through and cooling: The workpiece is brought to the optimum desired temperature by heating. Maintaining the condition by heating through depending on the material, workpiece geometry and desired final hardness level. Subsequent cooling to ambient temperature. The following are possible:

• low-stress annealing
• soft annealing

Tempering

Optimum, purely thermal treatment of the components and precise quenching with hardening oil or in a water bath, for example. Subsequent tempering as required for optimum minimization of material brittleness.

Advantages of in-house hardening at Wiedmann

• Smooth production process for single parts or entire component groups
• Consistent and always controllable quality throughout the entire production process
• Faster and more cost-effective development in prototype construction