The influence of hardening on the operational properties of soil-cutting tools

Abstract

Today, soil cutting tools are mainly made from carbon steels, which are heat treated to provide high hardness and strength. However, at present, the durability of such a hardened soil-cutting tool of both domestic and foreign manufacturers is far from perfect. One of the reasons for the insufficient resistance to abrasive wear of a soil-cutting tool subjected to hardening by heat treatment may be its heating by frictional force in contact with the soil. As a result of such heating, the steel undergoes additional tempering, which leads to a decrease in the surface hardness of the cutting edge of the tool by almost 2 times - 49-50 HRC to 22-34 HRC, de-pending on the intensity of metal heating. This circumstance was established during metallographic studies of samples cut from the shares of the KB-01 body of the PBS-4 plow. One of the ways to solve this problem is to obtain a wear-resistant layer on the surface of the soil-cutting tool, which is not subject to the negative effects of reheating during operation, for example, from alloyed white cast iron by the method of plasma-powder surfacing. Metallographic studies showed that the deposited layer has a hardness of more than 62 HRC. At the same time, such types of heat treatment as hardening, normalization or annealing do not have a noticeable effect on the hardness of the deposited layer. Metallographic studies of the deposited metal after operation also showed the absence of notice-able changes in its microstructure and hardness. This indicates that reheating from the action of fric-tion forces does not have a significant effect on the properties of a soil-cutting tool strengthened by plasma-powder surfacing, which contributes to an increase in its duration of operation.