ASM Online Member Community

To all-

Good morning to all ASM members. We run a high-volume induction heat treatment process here and lately have been having some issues with what we thought may have been foam creation in our quenchant tanks. Our lab that we use at this time cannot tell us if or what particulates or contaminates are possibly causing the problem. After we use the defoaming agent the problem does go away but it very short lived (end of 8-hour shift). Does anyone utilize the same induction heat treating and run into this? Or can you steer us to a lab that can do a more definitive breakdown of a sample for us? It may be an oil of some sort, but I am not quite sure on how to determine this.

Hello Rodney,

I am not sure if you are using water, oil or polymer as the quenching medium. In any case, a stable quenching performance requires constant monitoring of the quenching medium. I would recommend that you contact your quenching medium supplier and ask them for procedure and controls to maintain stability of the medium. The attached link from Fuchs contains a nice summary procedures used and tests for quench tank monitoring:

https://www.fuchs.com/fileadmin/schmierstoffe/Prospekte/Brochures_EN/Product_brochures_industry/Quenchants_Monitoring_and_Maintenance.pdf

To all-

Good morning to all ASM members. We run a high-volume induction heat treatment process here and lately have been having some issues with what we thought may have been foam creation in our quenchant tanks. Our lab that we use at this time cannot tell us if or what particulates or contaminates are possibly causing the problem. After we use the defoaming agent the problem does go away but it very short lived (end of 8-hour shift). Does anyone utilize the same induction heat treating and run into this? Or can you steer us to a lab that can do a more definitive breakdown of a sample for us? It may be an oil of some sort, but I am not quite sure on how to determine this.