Need help identifying steel, late 90's era Indy Car Gears, usable in damascus?

[Dirk]

We used to collect gears, spindles and all if the fun little parts teams would get rid of. We have a bunch of them and have lost interest in the collection. I was curious, would they be suitable to be used for damascus? I have been asking around and can't get answers from the racing community. Any feed back is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[mete]

They may very well be case hardened, especial the larger sizes . Haven't you asked the racing suppliers like Summit ? Case hardened would not be a good choice for Damascus .

 

[Sam Dean]

We used to collect gears, spindles and all if the fun little parts teams would get rid of. We have a bunch of them and have lost interest in the collection. I was curious, would they be suitable to be used for damascus? I have been asking around and can't get answers from the racing community. Any feed back is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Take them to your local scrap yard or metal recycling center. Nearly all of them have a handheld material analyzer (spectrometer), and can tell you EXACTLY what the material is. I do it all the time with one local to me.

As for the material, if it's case hardened it's probably 8620. It'll be almost 90Rc on the surface, so a good file should help figure that out. 4140 is also a common gear material, but will be significantly softer, around 38-42Rc IIRC. Regardless, I don't think (but honestly don't know) either of those would be good for what you want.

 

[Dirk]

They may very well be case hardened, especial the larger sizes . Haven't you asked the racing suppliers like Summit ? Case hardened would not be a good choice for Damascus .

I have asked around. Answers have been that at that time IndyCar was still doing a lot of proprietary stuff, so the gears could be anything from case hardened to some for advanced fully hardened steel.

 

[Dirk]

Take them to your local scrap yard or metal recycling center. Nearly all of them have a handheld material analyzer (spectrometer), and can tell you EXACTLY what the material is. I do it all the time with one local to me.

As for the material, if it's case hardened it's probably 8620. It'll be almost 90Rc on the surface, so a good file should help figure that out. 4140 is also a common gear material, but will be significantly softer, around 38-42Rc IIRC. Regardless, I don't think (but honestly don't know) either of those would be good for what you want.

Didn't think of the scrap yard. Good idea! Thanks!