• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.24-32
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• 2007

Laser surface hardening is beneficially used for surface treatment of structural steel. Due to very rapid heating and cooling rates, structural low-alloy steel(SCM4) can be hardened as self quenching. The aim of this research project is to improve the influence of the process laser parameters: laser power, spot size, surface roughness, and traverse speed. The laser beam is allowed to scan on the surface of the workpiece at the constant power(1095W), varying the traverse speed at 0.3m/min, 0.5m/min and 0.8m/min. The optical lens with the elliptical profile is designed to obtain a wide surface hardening area with uniform hardness. From the results of the experiment, it has been shown that the stable hardness is about 600$\sim$700Hv, when the laser power, focal position and the traverse speed are P=1095W, z=0mm and v=0.3m/min.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.176-183
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• 2005

Laser heat treatment technology is used for improving the feature of fatigue resistance and wear resistance in mobile parts. The purpose of this study is to compare the characteristics of laser heat treatment and high frequency heat treatment, which is commonly used in industrial place. For the preemptive experiment, the distribution, depth and size of hardening and its micro-structural features were compared between surface heat treatment case by defocusing and variables of each process for heat treatment by exclusively manufactured heat treatment optical system. As a result, high frequency heat treatment has wide distribution of hardening depth and width about 3 times larger than laser heat treatment, however, its average hardness showed 621.4Hv which is smaller than the average hardness of laser heat treatment with 691Hv.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.71-81
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• 2009

Die steel for plastic molding were used as mold material of automobile parts and electronic component industry. The material of this paper has superior to mechanical properties, such as repair weldability, corrosion resistance and high temperature strength, required mold parts for semitransparent. Laser-induced surface hardening technology is widely adopted to improver fatigue life and wear resistance via localized hardening at the surface of mold parts. The objective of this research work is to investigate on the characteristics of surface hardening of the laser process parameters, such as beam travel speed, laser power and defocsued spot position, for the case of die steel for plastic molding. Lens for surface hardening of large area is plano-convex type with elliptical profile to maintain uniform laser irradiation. According to the experimental results, large size of hardened layer at the surface of die steel for plastic molding was achieved, and microstructure of this layer was lath martensite. Optimal surface status and mechanical property of hardened layer could be obtained at 1095Watt, $0.25{\sim}0.3m/min$, 0mm (focal length: 232mm) for laser power, beam travel speed, and focal position. Where, heat input was $0.793{\times}10^{3}J/cm^2$, and width of hardened layer was 27.58mm.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.248-250
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• 2006

The study on a surface transformation hardening of a rod-shaped SM45C carbon steel is carried out by using CW Nd:YAG laser. Conventionally, $CO_2$ laser has been usually used as a laser source for a transformation hardening. however, it is needed to an additional absorbent coating like a colloidal graphite owing to a lower absorbtion rate. On the other hand, no cost and post-removal process of coating is required to Nd:YAG laser, due to a higher absorbtion rate relatively. Moreover, there is a merit which is capable of building up the more flexible processing system resulted from a beam delivery through a optical fiber. In this study, we were going to recognize characteristics of a transformation hardening using a optic head with a gaussian beam distribution.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.85-91
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• 2007

The conventional study on the laser surface transformation hardening has been carried out with a beam of the specified shape and uniform power-intensity distribution in order to ensure the uniformity of the hardening depth. Two types of beams - the circular gaussian beam and rectangular beam of the uniform power-intensity distribution were used in this study. we were supposed to optimize the process parameters and to compare the hardening results with two optics respectively. As a result, the hardness distribution of the hardened zone was similar in both cases and the hardened phase by the rectangular beam was denser than that by the circular gaussian beam.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.22 no.11 s.176
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• pp.51-58
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• 2005

Laser surface hardening technologies have been used to improve characteristics of wear and to enhance the fatigue resistance for automotive parts. The objective of this research work is to investigate the influence of the process parameters, such as power of laser and defocused spot position, on the characteristics of laser heat treatment for the case of SM45C medium carbon steel. CW Nd:YAG laser is selected as the heat source. The optical lens with the elliptical profile is designed to obtain a wide heat treatment area with a uniform hardness. From the results of the experiments, it has been shown that the maximum hardness is approximatly 780 Hv when the power and the travel speed of laser are 1,095 W and 0.6 m/min, respectively. In addition, the hardening width using the elliptical lens was three time larger than that using the defocusing of laser beam.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.600-607
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• 2011

Recently, high carbon steel has become essential not only for shipbuilding parts, but also mass production. Its surface has been treated by carburizing, nitriding and induction hardening, but these existing treatments cause considerable deformation and increase the expense of postprocessing after treatment; furthermore, these treatments cannot be easily applied to parts that requiring the hardening of only a certain section. This is because the treatment cannot heat the material homogeneously, nor can it heat all of it. Laser surface treatment was developed to overcome these disadvantages, and when the laser beam is irradiated on the surface and laser speed is appropriate, the laser focal position is rapidly heated and the thermal energy of surface penetrates the material after irradiation, finally imbuing it with a new mechanical characteristic by the process of self-quenching. This research estimates the material characteristic after efficient and functional surface treatment using HPDL, which is more efficient than the existing CW Nd:YAG laser heat source. To estimate, microstructural changes and hardness characteristics of two parts (the surface treatment part, and parental material) are observed with the change of laser beam speed and surface temperature.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Heat Treatment
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.257-262
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• 2010

Recently, metal molding has become essential not only for automobile parts, but also mass production, and has greatly influenced production costs as well as the quality of products. Its surface has been treated by carburizing, nitriding and induction hardening, but these existing treatments cause considerable deformation and increase the expense of postprocessing after treatment; furthermore, these treatments cannot be easily applied to parts that requiring the hardening of only a certain section. This is because the treatment cannot heat the material homogeneously, nor can it heat all of it. Laser surface treatment was developed to overcome these disadvantages, and, when the laser beam is irradiated on the surface and laser speed is appropriate, the laser focal position is rapidly heated and the thermal energy of surface penetrates the material after irradiation, finally imbuing it with a new mechanical characteristic by the process of self-quenching. This research estimates the material characteristic after efficient and functional surface treatment using HPDL, which is more efficient than the existing CW Nd:YAG laser heat source.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.5460-5466
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• 2014

In this study, mainly for kitchen knives and small swords, cutlery, etc. STS420J2 used material used for the experiments. In order to cure the surface of the test piece after the rough grinding and fine grinding was performed in order polishing. Perform the surface hardening of STS420J2 local area by using a diode laser. The output of the laser diode and the feed rate to the process variable. Micro-hardness testing, microstructure testing, scanning electron microscope testing(SEM), the heat input to the analysis. After analyzing the experiment to compare the mechanical properties of the material. When using a diode laser to assess the soundness of the surface hardening. Accordingly, the process for deriving the optimum demonstrate the feasibility.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.529-539
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• 1994

In laser heat treatment process of steels, the thin layer of substrate is rapidly heated to the austenitizing temperature and subsequently cooled at a very fast rate due to the self-quenching effect. Consequently, it is transformed to martensitic structure which has low magnetic permeability. This observation facilitates the use of a sensor measuring the change of electromagnetic field induced by the hardening layer. In this paper, the eddy-current electromagnetic field is analyzed by a finite element method. The purpose of this analysis is to investigate how the electrical impedance of the sensor's sensing coil varies with the change in permeability. To achieve this, a numerical model is formulated, taking into consideration the hardening depth, distance of the sensor from the hardened surface and the frequency driving the sensor. The results obtained by numerical simulation show that the eddy-current measurement method can feasibly be used to measure the changing hardening depth within the frequency range from 10 kHz to 50 kHz.