To study the effect of heat treatment on the mechanical properties of low-alloy cold work steel / Mohd Ridzwan Abd. Rahman, Rohaizi Abdul Ghani and Hanisah Sehak

Heat treatment is an operation involving the heating of the solid metal to definite temperature followed by cooling at suitable rates in order to obtain certain physical properties, which are associated with changes in the nature, form size and distribution of the micro constitutions. In our project, we used low alloy cold work steel that we brought from mechanical shop at Sungai Rasau, Klang. We cuts the raw materials into I tensile test specimen and we did a heat treatment on it. Heat treatment that we done in our process can be classifieds as follows: (a) Hardening, (b) Tempering, (c) Quenching. Our hardening temperature is about 1000°and than we holding for a soaking time at this temperature for one hour. After that put all the specimen into a cooling medium, that is liquid nitrogen. After all the heat treatments done, than we test the mechanical properties of steel by using a tensile test machine. Tensile test is used to study a strength or strain of steel. We also study a hardness of steel by using a Rockwell machine. For the last, we did a photomicrography process to see the microstructure and grain size of low-alloy cold work steel.