OPTIMIZATION OF NORMALISING PROCESS PARAMETERS TO ENHANCE MACHINABILITY OF 16MnCr5 STEEL: A STUDY OF MEDIUM SIZED AUTO PARTS INDUSTRY

E-Mail Id: guravtar14443@gmail.com 1 Phd, Scholar, Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Dr. B R Ambedkar NIT Jalandhar, India 2 Associate Professor, Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Dr. B R Ambedkar NIT Jalandhar, India Abstract-Low carbon steel such as 16MnCr5 is a widely used grade of steel in the manufacturing industry, especially in automobile industry for manufacturing of gears and shafts due to its favourable properties such as toughness, ductility, high tensile strength, good resistance to corrosion. Heat treatment process such as normalizing is often required to be done on raw material to soften the materials and to relieve the stresses. However, if process parameters are not selected properly, the desirable mechanical properties of steel may not be achieved. The present investigation is an attempt to study the effect of the process parameters such as soaking time, temperature and iso-annealing temperature on the hardness of 16MnCr5 steel using Taguchi method. These were varied and resulting changes in material microstructure were observed. Further, hardness in the range of 160-210BHN and 190-260BHN was observed, with the non uniform distribution of ferrite and pearlite phases. Also, the surface of the samples was found to have coarse grains.