Film Deposition by Duplex Treatment with Hastelloy Cage on AISI 6160 Steel

AISI 6160 steel is used to manufacture cutting blades and springs due to its high tensile strength and good ductility. However, it has low mechanical strength and low wear resistance. In this work, a duplex treatment consisting of CCPD followed by PN was performed to improve the surface properties of the steel. In addition, XRD, optical microscopy, microhardness, and sphere-disk tribological analysis were used to verify the surface changes of the samples. The results showed a significant improvement in surface hardness and better wear resistance of AISI 6160 Steel submitted to Duplex treatment. The sample submitted to the CCPD treatment for 4 hours and, after nitriding at 500 °C for 2 hours, presented higher surface hardness and wear resistance than the sample only subjected to plasma deposition, characterizing the efficiency of the use of the duplex treatment adopted in the present work.