Eco hardening centre
new hardening technology application
The new technology introduces use of protective noble gas atmosphere as opposed to conventional protective gas atmosphere in the hardening metal processing. Technology standards introduced are HRN EN 746-1:2004 (complementary EU standard EN 746-1:1997) that refers to Industrial thermo processing equipment – Part 1. Common safety requirements for industrial thermo processing equipment. The technology is based on the use of inert gases: Argon (Ar) and Helium (He) within hardening process. The gases prevent degradation of the steel surface that occurs at standard furnace temperature of more than 1000ºC used for hardening (improve quality of hardened tools and construction parts). The impact on production and business efficiency is significant: it improves quality of steel processed (mechanical and chemical properties of steel differs based on the hardening technology used); it use less gas for heating (decrease of operational costs up to 5%), increases working cycles of furnace directly impacting production efficiency, automatic control of noble gas consumption (decreasing operational costs of production and use of gases), decreases risks and costs of protection and management of materials (oil used in conventional cooling process).
The new technology alleviates depletion of the natural gas reserves, emission of CO2 and NOx to the atmosphere as the combustion process is replaced by use of inert noble gases. Additionally, ISO 14001 will be introduced in addition to ISO 9001. Both standards will further increase quality management of company’s production process promoting green economy and energy efficiency. The introduced HRN EN 746-1:2004 includes common safety requirements for the equipment introduced.