hardening a steel frame

Im getting a mild steel FW chassis made up. My question is how much roughly (and does anyone know who could do it) it would cost to the whole thing hardened in some way? im guessing nitrade hardened or something similar.

Cheers

Dan

I dont think you want nitride hardning as that is just making the suface hard- i think you want to make the steel itself stronger so you need to anneal it.

anything that generally strengthens the frame!

I don't think there is a reasonable, affordable way to strengthen a mild steel frame trough surface hardening.

All heat treatment can result in warping, especialy in sharp edged shapes. That is another matter, isn't it?

Is this for armour or structural? If it's plate for armour we have had great success with nitride coating over the years. Razer was also Nitride coated and held up well.

It would be a monocoque chassis/ frame.

That is another matter.
But still, heat treatments ain't cheap is done by pro's.

Your right Mario, they're not cheap - they're quite often free :lol:

If you want your bits coated then it's worth ringing around your local hardening places and see if any of them will do it for you for free as sponsorship. It's worth reading up Ed's sponsorship guide if you've not tried getting sponsored things before.

Will do! Cheers. Have to have a look again as I couldn't find anything too local when having a quick look yesterday. Hopefully having the whole thing done will be possible

Grant, it seems places for heat treatments have other idea's over here than there.

Personally I would try to reduce the hardening of the welds, reduce the tension. That would make it stronger, but heat treating armour and plates would be fine.

Is hardening desirable? A bit of flex in a chassis is arguably a good thing, idntit? As long as the flexing points aren't weak (along a baseplate on which everything is mounted, for example) a bit of bend absorbs shock instead of simply trying to man-it-out and take the hits, which a stiff frame would. T2 can have a wheel off the ground and still have the other 3 in contact... I think it's that that kept it running flip after flip.

That all depends on the design of the robot. I prefer to build a solid robot, other's prefer the plastic and flexible types. Case hardening of armour is quite a good thing if the robot's design suits it. Many spinner's used to glance off my old shell :D

personnaly I wouldnt get the frame hardened as it would make it harder to repair and more brittle, you would want a bit of flexibility to absorb the impact from big hits. I got Laser II front lifter plate nitride coated and it sits on a hdpe and 4mm steel frame and that can take some of the biggest hits from ls4.