Diamond Pressing on the Wear Resistance and the State of Heat Treated Alloy Steel Surfaces

In manufacturing processes, surfaces and their properties are as important as the bulk properties of the materials. Surface treatment is an important aspect of all manufacturing processes. It has been used to impart certain physical and mechanical properties, such as appearance, corrosion, friction, wear and fatigue resistance. Widely used methods of finishing treatment that create necessary parts with the given roughness usually do not provide optimum quality of the surface. Therefore, methods of surface plastic deformation (SPD) are used. One of the most effective representative is the diamond pressing. In this paper the effect of diamond pressing process with a different pressing force (50, 100,150,200,250) N on the state of heat-treated alloy steel surfaces was studied and the results of the experiments are presented. Enhancements on the micro hardness of the heat treated alloy steel surfaces that have been processed by diamond pressing up to the following percentages compared to the ground surfaces: 32, 28, 31 and 43% for D2, O1, H13 and 3115 hardened alloy steel surfaces, respectively. In addition, it has been shown that there is an enhancement on the surface quality of heat-treated alloy steel surfaces. The best enhancement of the average surface roughness (Ra) was 16.6, 45, 36 and 50% for D2, O1, H13 and 3115, respectively, which are heat-treated. For the microstructure analysis, micrograph of the processed surfaces of D2 heat-treated alloy steel was given. It has been shown that the depth of plastic deformed layer about 200 μm. Experimental scheme for wear testing of steel shaft in the friction couple type "shaft-cuff" and results has been given in this paper. It has been shown that Diamond pressing process has a considerable effect on the wear resistance of D2 heat treated alloy steel and it is concluded that the DPP has an improvement on the wear resistance of D2 heat treated alloy steel shaft that have been processed by diamond pressing relative to the ground shaft.