Normalising of 316L Stainless Steel using Temperature and Holding Time Variations

Abstract

Materials for some component must be through machining processes, for example, is a lathe. Lathe causes internal stress. One of many ways to avoid the internal stress is normalising. Normalising of the heat treatment is heating materials above austenite temperature, holding for a period for transformation and air cooling. This research was conducted to analyse the effect of holding time and temperature normalising of 316L stainless steel toward hardness and microstructure. Hardness testing was measured by microhardness Vickers tester, and the characterisation was used optical microscope and XRD. The highest hardness was obtained 193.2 HVN from normalising with a temperature of 800°C and holding time of 30 minutes, while the lowest was 166.3 HV using 950°C and 90 minutes. The microstructure was obtained austenite and ferrite phase. The normalised specimen had a wider peak profile than the unnormalised specimen, can be observed at 50.9° of the 2θ angle which had bigger FWHM.