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I am reaching out for some insight into our current situation. We have to switch steel suppliers due to some unforeseen circumstances. In lieu of this our current supplier provides us with a 1030M that we induction heat treat and rapid quench. We have been looking into other suppliers to provide us the same or close comparison to it. Upon receiving the sample steel, we are unable to dial in the steel as to even close to our current recipe/process. Up to this point we have tried to dwell the parts going from the actual heat treat to the UConn A quench bath. We also have tried multiple settings of adjusting our power, current, and heat treat time at the heat treat unit itself. Currently all our trial runs have proven ineffective to gain the Rockwell C results from our current steel supplier. I am not familiar enough with the actual steel mill processing and what could make this such a drastic change for us. this is new territory for us as we have used the same supplier for over 20 years. But as times have changed, we need to make product from a completely new supplier.

Any help is greatly appreciated in this.

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Rodney Recore
Plant Process Metallurgist
Gasport NY
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Chemistry, grain size, and structure matter. 

The hardenability (D.I.) value of that grade could vary greatly due to small alloy additions or not. Check your two chem certs in a hardenability calculator (SAE J406 / ASTM A255). Also, the minor chems could affect how quickly you have to quench and miss the knee of the TTT. 

Grain size coming to you could affect post-heat treat grain size and hardness.

Also, the mill structure coming to you matters. If it's cold rolled, it could recrystallize/nucleate grains on the way up to austenite during induction heating. If it's a very annealed, open pearlite and ferrite structure, or even spheroidized structure, it will take longer at temp or higher temp to fully austenitize before quench.

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Greg Ward, P.E.
Metallurgist
Auburn, MI
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-25-2025 12:43
From: Rodney Recore
Subject: 1030 steel induction heat treat issues

I am reaching out for some insight into our current situation. We have to switch steel suppliers due to some unforeseen circumstances. In lieu of this our current supplier provides us with a 1030M that we induction heat treat and rapid quench. We have been looking into other suppliers to provide us the same or close comparison to it. Upon receiving the sample steel, we are unable to dial in the steel as to even close to our current recipe/process. Up to this point we have tried to dwell the parts going from the actual heat treat to the UConn A quench bath. We also have tried multiple settings of adjusting our power, current, and heat treat time at the heat treat unit itself. Currently all our trial runs have proven ineffective to gain the Rockwell C results from our current steel supplier. I am not familiar enough with the actual steel mill processing and what could make this such a drastic change for us. this is new territory for us as we have used the same supplier for over 20 years. But as times have changed, we need to make product from a completely new supplier.

Any help is greatly appreciated in this.

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Rodney Recore
Plant Process Metallurgist
Gasport NY
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