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

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, depending 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 noticeable changes in its microstructure and hardness. This indicates that reheating from the action of friction 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.

soil cutting tool, cutting edge, abrasive wear, hardening, tempering, plasma-powder surfacing