Our Temper Colors for Steel Chart Post remains very popular. So here is a chart of Heat Treat Colors for Steel.
These days pyrometers are affordable. But it is the mark of a craftsman to be able to tell temperature by eye, if only to validate the instrumentation (or suspect it!)
These colors were obtained from a 0.40 wt. % carbon, alloy steel, as seen through a furnace peep hole during average daylight conditions.
Temper Colors for Steel Chart
Art of the Craft
Knowledge Retention
Tag: Knowledge Retention
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 190,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 3 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!
One of the reasons I blog is for “Knowledge Retention.” I want to be sure that the stuff I know and take for granted makes the cut into the electronic realm.
In 5o years or so (the apparent limit of paper’s routine usefulness in my experience) the out of print books with the stuff that I practice will be pretty much lost.
We think we are living in an information age. Actually, the books that those of us over 50 learned from will be mostly lost, and we will be considered by history to have lived in the last “Dark Age.”
So my blogging is my “Project Gutenberg” for Metallurgy, Machining, Management and this Moment in time in our Market.
What knowledge do you (your people) have that will be lost when you (they) leave? What is your plan for assuring it is not lost?
Disney had a plan. Jobs had a plan.
What’s your plan?
Mine is speakingofprecision.
Thank you, readers, for your attention to our posts.
We will continue to post thought leadership, knowledge retention, and emerging issues that face the precision machining industry and all of us in North American Manufacturing. Thanks for paying attention!
In steels, tempering is reheating hardened steel to some temperature below the lower critical temperature for the purpose of decreasing hardness and increasing toughness.
(The lower critical temperature is the temperature of the austenite-to-pearlite eutectoid transformation in steels- below this temperature austenite does not exist.)
Tempering is also sometimes applied to normalized steels. For the same reasons- decrease hardness and improve toughness.
The chart above shows the colors that are elicited by tempering a 0.95% carbon content steel at the temperatures shown. (Think drill rod.)
I saved this chart back in my youth from a Bethlehem Steel Handbook.
This is what we here at PMPA call “Knowledge Retention” and “Tools You Can Use.”
Why has PMPA created this blog, www.pmpaspeakingofprecision.com when there are so many other things competing for your attention?
By speaking of precision, we can facilitate knowledge retention while providing tools you can use, and business intelligence, to help sustain our manufacturing community here in North America.
Here are our top 5 reasons:
- Give you tools you can use.
- Speaking of precision.
- Knowledge retention.
- Business Intelligence.
- Sustaining our community
1. Tools You Can Use By sharing best practices, tried and proven ideas, and insights into our processes and markets, we provide “tools you can use” to stay competitive, improve your sustainability, and understand your business. Everyone understands the value of tools you can use…Tuesday we try to run a shop focus tool you can use item in our blog.
2. Speaking of Precision Our purpose is to find the really relevant information, news, tools, knowledge and business intelligence that today’s shops need to make their way through the volatility and uncertainty we face. As things continue to get more complex and more ambiguous, our blog tries to provide you with sense making information from and for the point of view of precision machined parts manufacturing
3. Knowledge Retention Our businesses have overarching needs for shop process, craft, financial, commercial, market and regulatory information and wisdom. As older workers retire or leave the industry, there is a possibility that they will take with them ideas and process knowledge that isn’t necessarily easily retrieved anywhere else. We are trying to add those kinds of subjects to our blog where they will be more easily findable through the use of keywords and search engine. Pmpaspeakingofprecision.com is a place for us to archive and retain this knowledge on line for our industry.
4. Business Intelligence Uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity are rampant in our world today. But the task is how do we find information that helps us make sense of it all? What is relevant? What will help us make decisions? What will help us anticipate upcoming issues? PMPAspeakingofprecision is one place where the issues facing our industry will be discovered, reflected upon, and presented for your action.
5. Sustaining Our Community PMPA’s vision is to be the premier provider of association services to advance the global competitiveness of the Precision Machining Industry. We believe that Manufacturing is important in North America, and we see our role as helping to sustain North American Manufacturing by helping sustain Precision Machining as a North American competency. We recognize the demographic realities of the baby boom generation starting to exit the workforce, and new generations with new information needs entering the industry.
Our blog www.pmpaspeakingofprecision.com is a way for PMPA to facilitate the transfer of important knowledge, ideas and developments as this demographic change takes place in our workforce- and in the purchasing and engineering departments of our customers.
That’s why PMPA is Speaking of Precision. To help you make sense of the changes, forces, and events that affect our industry. By sharing tools you can use and providing knowledge retention and business intelligence.
To help you remain competitive.
You can visit PMPA on the web at www.pmpa.org .
