Experience and prospects of use of structural steels for nitridated gears

Abstract

The experience of using known and new steels to improve the manufacturability and strength of the main parts of machines, hardened by nitriding, is generalized. New approaches to manufacture of gear wheels hardened by nitriding, both when using aluminum-containing steels and a new material, steel 40ХМФА, are considered. To improve the efficiency and man ufacturability of parts production from aluminum-containing steel 38Х2МЮА, widely used in mechanical engineering, a fundamentally new technology of preliminary heat treatment of workpieces of parts – “incomplete hardening” has been developed, which provides both an increase in the machinability and accuracy of large-sized gear wheels, and an increase in strength due to the elimination of the brittleness of nitrided layer. The high hardness of the nitrided surface of the parts – up to 900 HV – also ensures high wear resistance of the parts. Gear wheels made of new aluminum-containing steel 20ХН4МФЮА solidified at the nitriding stage, have strength characteristics equal to cemented parts, which allows not only increasing the bearing capacity of a number of products, but significant simplification of the technology of manufacturing precise parts that are complex in shape, replacing carburizing with nitriding, thereby eliminating the necessary after-carburizing finishing operation – grinding. Steel 40ХМФА, which does not contain aluminum, has increased heat resistance, hardenability and machinability of parts, as well as the characteristics of their hardened layer. The nitrided layer of gears 0.5–0.7 mm thick does not contain brittle components, which, with a core hardness of 300–320 HB, excludes its “flaking” and subsequent destruction of parts. The use of 40ХМФА steel makes it possible to solve the problems of reliability and service life of large-sized nitrided gears, but it is also promising for the entire range of gears with internal gearing, as well as parts of movable spline gearings. These characteristics also in some cases allow replacing the carburizing of gears (modulus less than 4 mm) by nitriding when using 40ХМФА steel.