Concerning the influence of pre-heat treatments on the grain size stability of microalloyed carburising steels

The production of case hardened parts involves a number of heat treatment steps with different influences on the grain size stability. Microalloyed steels in particular, which are expected to be very stable, tend to react quite sensitive to additional heat treatments. The object of the project, summarised in this paper, was to carry out a basic preliminary study to evaluate the precipitation behaviour during different heat treatments and their value for the microalloyed steels in case hardening treatments. However, the essential condition for this is sufficient alloying of the steels. In this work, it was possible to derive a simple heat treatment that restores the grain size stability for sufficiently alloyed steels.