Low Pressure Carburizing: Overcoming Process Limitations

Low pressure gas carburizing (LPC) technology continues to find new applications in the heat treating industry. However, certain process limitations prevent wider adoption. Among them, the advertised benefits of high carburizing temperatures and high pressure gas quenching can only be achieved utilizing high cost alloys and increased capital equipment costs. In addition, the current load size and production capacity being processed in most equipment is limited when compared to the average production produced in atmosphere processing. This is caused by numerous reasons with the process and current commercially available equipment. This paper will summarize these issues and highlight recent efforts to work around and overcome these limitations.