Plate quench?

I think 1/2" as a minimum, 1" would be better. The size only needs to be large enough that you can easily fit your blade in, though no harm in larger. One of mine is probably 4' long...

1" X 4" X 12" Might be a good all around size.

A2 and D2 can be done in steel. Others may benefit from aluminum, especially stainless because cooling rate might affect rust resistance.
 
Was just goiing to order some Aluminum and was thinking .5 but if the 1" is better then that is what Ill get. Only going to use them for folder parts. so mabey 6x6x1 or should it be bigger?
 
Rusty the plates we use for most all of our CPM S30V knives are 18"X5"X1" and made of steel. They are on the table saw to the left.

We have been known to use larger items for quenching some of the larger blades as you can see below. Serious bladesmiths might want to sit down before viewing. The blade being quenched is a large chopper made of CPM 3V. Our 1" plates just would not cool it fast enough, but those two anvils sucked the heat right out.
335614517.jpg
 
Ya know I just happen to have 2 extara anvils layin around. Hmmm is it worth the hernia though? Think I'll go with the aluminum.
 
I don't know what type of steel you are going to use, we use mostly CPM S30V and haven't had much luck with aluminum. We have two plates that are about three inches thick and similar dimentions to the steel plates I mentioned above. They just don't cool the steel fast enough. I have heard of people using aluminum as quench plates, but to me they just don't seem to conduct the heat away from the steel as rapidly as the steel ones do.
 
I mostly use CPM 154cm and ats34. but I am thinkin about making some in D2. The thickest material I will use is 1/8" thick.
 
The thermal mass of steel is about three times that of aluminum, so it can "soak up" three times more heat for each degree it rises.

The heat conductivity of aluminum is about three times that of steel, so it can more three times more heat in a given time.

Simple heat transfer is a function of delta T (advantage steel) and coefficient of thermal conductivity (advantage aluminum)

Thick aluminum would give a fast quench and have more heat capacity and probably have a better curve - fast to get under the nose, then slower as the plates heat up during the martensite transformation.

For an air quench steel, even though steel is three times slower than aluminum, it is orders of magnitude faster than air, so is it fine, especially if you're doing a bunch of blades and don't want excessive temperature rise of your plates.

For something like 154CM, the faster speed of aluminum would be a good idea.

I wonder if a good fit and copper plates would allow thin O1, 52100, 1084 and 5160 to plate quench?


Edit: Mike beat me to it. I write slow...
 
You know what else?

A few years ago when things like QC7 allowed aluminum to be used in production injection mold tools, there was some hoopla about how the better heat conductivity was going to reduce molding cycle times. But then the reality didn't quite meet expectations. Folks came to realize that in many situations, the bottle neck was the heat transfer of the plastic. See, it has to flow through the plastic part to get out - it isn't a free ride to the surface. So even if k is an infinite number, it still takes about one second per .001" of plastic thickness (per side) to cool a typical part enough to eject. Aluminum didn't really help much for a lot of parts. Them's da breaks...
 
I was thinking about the thermal conductivity loss because of between plates and SS foil would have some gaps of air that would diminish the speed of temperature transfer. For CPU's we use thermal grease to fill the gaps of irregularities of heat sink and the CPU surface. This way virtually all the surface has a connection to the plate. I wonder if thermal greases would be applicable for quenching? Though we need a thermal grease that can withstand very high temperatures without any deterioration...
 
Rusty I use ats-34 almost all the time and quench as many as 10 blades and springs (20 parts) at a time. I use steel plates 1/2"x4"x18" very similar to the ones on Harry Mathews table saw, so they are not in the foil. As soon as I can cut the packets open (in front of a blower) they go to the plates before the ice. As far as the Rc goes The variation seems very small cause I'm consistently getting 62 after the draw.
Ken
 
my plates are AL and 1x6x18 inch the other trick is to make sure you have them pressed to the hot blank well (more then just the weight of the plates)

so far as other steels if your quick and have the press tight and the blanks flat (no bevel cut ) you can get away with 3/32 O1 in Al plates

let me tell you how great it is to quench a 12 inch slicer or a 4x8 cleaver blank in plates no warp not even a hair sure you got to grind hard steel from edge to spine and cant get a quench line but hey thems the brakes
 
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