"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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"Buerste" wrote in message
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snip

But the poster thinks that cyro treating is going to make his piece
harder, sharper and tougher, ain't gonna' happen like he thinks. I'll
refer to my bud George Fisher of "Ion-vacuum Technologies"
http://www.ivactech.com/ George knows cutting tools and materials and is
probably one of the top 10 physicists on the planet. We've discussed
cyro treating many times and I relayed his opinion. It seems you'll get
a different opinion from people that do cyro for a living...kind of like
global warming.

The effects of cryogenic treatment aren't a matter of opinion, Tom.
There's been extensive testing over the years in independent labs. This
was fully settled by the time I was covering materials for _American
Machinist_, back in the late '70s.

In cases where conversion from austenite to martensite is not complete,
cryo treatment can complete the conversion. This eliminates the
room-temperature austenite phase that paradoxically keeps the piece from
achieving its full potential hardness, and also contributes to brittleness
or other weakness through a mechanism I don't remember. (Hey, it's been 30
years.)

But the effects are slight. They can pay off in some kinds of press
tooling, which is where the method was being applied in those days. Adding
small margins of performance can add tens of thousands of hits to the life
of a blanking tool, for example.

--
Ed Huntress


I see, George always said "assuming proper heat treating" and in my case,
the D-2 had to be triple drawn. I'm also blessed with a heat treater that
has always taken extra special care with my stuff and I know he must do so
at a loss as most of my parts weigh ounces. And then to have IVAC do
different coatings on my parts. He's close to a breakthrough with an ion
implantation technology, of which I get lost quickly when he tries to
explain to me but I get the flavor that it will be big!