Hi Wayne, I'll try to clear up some things. First, cryogenic treatment is an enhancement to heat treating, not a replacement. You cannot take a piece of soft tool steel and increase the hardness one point through treatment. The transformation of the grain structure that takes place during heat...
Kipp,
To harden 4140 to higher Rockwell, you will need to anneal the steel and then repeat the heat treating cycle. You can expect to get decarbing, or scaling. Once 4140 is heat treated, you will need to turn some of the OD to get below the softer outer layer. To get a different hardness, you...
There is a cryogenic treater, near Boston, who treats such mounts used in space to
make the mount stable. He seems to be successful at it. If you are still interested, you can e-mail me and I'll give you his phone number ( dougb@alpinecryo.com) Dougb
There is more going on as a result of cryogenic treatment than is understood at this time. Why is carbide wear life increased, even when the carbide is TiN coated? The best advise I have is to try it on whatever and accept the results of a scientific study regardless of whether it is understood.
