“Why is it important to Control Carbon Potential When Carburizing?”

Earlier this week David Pye wrote an article on Carbon Control for the MTI Weekly Hot ENews! – David is MTI’s official Metallurgical Consultant and his company is Metallurgical Consultants, Inc. The article describes the early use of carburizing and how is all came about (4000 years ago!) and also describes how Carbon content is controlled today with the most popular gas analysis being provided by an Oxygen Probe.

A brief excerpt from the article is shown below:

“Control of the furnace atmosphere (not just for carburizing) is almost mandatory. Perhaps the most popular method of process gas analysis is that of the use of the Oxygen Probe. The probe readings can be displayed either by the milli-volt reading or by the more common practice of a direct readout of carbon potential. (Remember also that the oxygen probe requires a mandatory burn out every 8 hours or so).
Control of the furnace atmosphere is one of the major controlling factors that will determine the quality the achieved surface metallurgy for carburizing.”