Development of Carburising Towards Agile Production

It is estimated that there are 200,000 carburising plants operating in the global industry, 75–80% of which are atmospheric plants and 15–20% of which are vacuum plants. A gradual process of replacing operationally worn atmospheric plants with vacuum plants is also being observed, which will increase the market share of low-pressure carburising technologies. This will force a gradual shift away from this technology, just as global trends are moving away from sources of fossil-based raw materials and energy (natural gas, oils). In the second half of the twentieth century, new designs of carburising equipment were developed that precisely implemented the process conditions more efficiently and more ecologically. For the optimisation of the carburising process, further work seems to be possible only by optimising numerical calculations, as is the case with low-pressure carburising technology, where an efficient and effective method of process utilisation is achieved by integrating the technology with computer-based optimisation and simulation systems. Currently, the challenge for carburising is producing short series and diverse products. This is an even greater challenge for device design than for the process.