Semi-Continuous Case Hardening by Low Pressure Carburizing and High Pressure Gas Quench

Case hardening by carburizing is the most common heat treatment in mass production, which relies on atmosphere or vacuum carburizing followed by oil or gas quenching and finally by tempering. Low Pressure Carburizing (LPC) specifically is becoming more and more common in today’s drive component production processes. Mass production case hardening can be done under batch, multi-chamber batch, semi-continuous batch and single piece flow process conditions. Semi-continuous batch processing promotes improvements to the process, timing, throughput, utility consumption and process costs involved in case hardening. The semi-continuous batch approach to case hardening is a proven and reliable alternative to continuous atmospheric systems and multi-chamber batch processing.