Carburizing
Carburizing is a thermo-chemical diffusion treatment used to enrich a part’s superficial layer with carbon. This enrichment is done in a carbon-rich environment and case hardening is always followed by quenching to harden the enriched layer through the formation of martensite.

The advantages of this treatment are :

• A hard layer of predetermined depth;
• Good resistance to wear and fatigue;
• Control of the core hardness by subsequent quenching to obtain required ductility.

After a deep carburizing treatment, a cryogenic treatment is often required to transform the residual austenite. This process reduces the risk of cracking during subsequent grinding and gives the parts dimensional stability. Also, the resulting homogeneous martensitic structure provides improved resistance to wear and a reduced friction coefficient.

Carbonitriding
Carbonitriding enriches the part’s surface with carbon and nitrogen. Always followed by quenching, this process combines the advantages of nitriding and carburizing by making the treated material more resistant to abrasion, wear and fatigue and by reducing its friction coefficient.

Thermetco performs gas carburizing and gas carbonitriding using only industrial gases (methanol, nitrogen and ammonia) in controlled atmosphere furnaces.

This process is extremely precise and produces very clean parts. In addition, our automated equipment can be programmed to execute fully reproducible cycles.

At your disposal, 5 furnaces using these processes with maximum dimension Ø 52" x 89" (1320mm x 2260mm)