SUMMARY
Glow discharge assisted nitriding and carbonitriding are widely used in industry, since they effectively improve the performance properties of the machine parts and tool components made of various steel grades, cast iron, titanium alloys, aluminum, and, recently, also nickel alloys. These processes are ecological and economical, and they compete successfully with the conventional treatments used in automobile industry, such as induction hardening, electro-chemical chromium deposition or thermal spraying. This is due to the numerous advantages of glow discharge nitriding and carbonitriding, which include the ability of controlling precisely the structure, the phase composition, and the chemical composition of the diffusion layers produced, there are also opportunity of treating parts of complicated shapes. Moreover consumption of electric energy and reactive gasses are low, the necessity of laborious finishing operations to be performed after the treatment is eliminated,, and there is the possibility of conducting the treatment at low temperatures, starting even at 400 oC. The paper presents examples of practical application of the glow discharge assisted nitriding and carbonitriding processes in automobile industry
Keywords
Glow-discharge, carbonitriding, nitriding.
1 Instytut Mechaniki Precyzyjnej, Warszawa
2 Politechnika Warszawska
