Case Depth Measurement of Induction Hardening Using Image Processing

Case depth measurement of the induction hardened steel parts is necessary for quality control. Vickers microhardness test is the most industrially accepted method to identify the case depth. But this method is a time consuming one and it requires expensive equipment. The aim of this study is to develop a different method to determine the case depth using image processing. The surface hardened steel samples were cross cut, ground and etched with Nital. The etched macrosectioned specimens were scanned by a scanner. The scanned images were evaluated by the developed software. The principle of the software is to identify the gray level difference. The effective case depths of the surface hardened specimens obtained by Vickers microhardness test and the developed method were compared. It was found that the deviation of the developed method was ±0.12 mm at the case depth range of 0.6 - 2.0 mm and ±0.14 mm at the case depth range of 2.1 - 4.3 mm. The measuring time was only 20% of Vickers microhardness test. The deviation range is much lower than the tolerance case depth specification for induction hardening in general.