How To Select Best Hardness Tester

Hello Pals,

Are you buying new hardness tester or replace existing one with new one??
Don't want to end up with testing machine which will be costly and will be under utilized after put into work?

Then here are few things you should workout before you go ahead procuring Hardness Testing machine.

1. Know Your Requirements

First of all know your requirements of hardness testing.

• Type material e.g. steel ,copper,aluminium
• At what stage of processing product hardness is required e.g.in raw material condition, semi finished or final product. If you are taking hardness on final form Hardness indentation can lead to rejection of final product.  
•  Form of product e.g flat samples ,round sample, concave, convex. It will be necessary to decide fixtures or anvils for hardness tester and correction factors if necessary.
• Thickness , area ,width of the sample.
• Location of Hardness tester whether in Lab or at manufacturing lab.

2. Decide Hardness Scale

Decide Hardness Scale as per requirements of either international standards or your agreed standard with your customer. Usually Brinell(HB),Rockwell(HRC,HRB) scale is used for hardness testing for raw materials,for semi finish products and final products Vicker(Hv) scale is used.It will help to decide type of indenters, Load requirement of machine. 

If your requirements are Vicker,Brinell,Rockwell all three or more than that , Universal hardness tester will be best option. But they are costly.

 

3. Decide Hardness Range

Decide hardness range of different scale over which you want to perform hardness test.It will help you decide type and hardness of Standard block. This standard block will be used for calibration. 

e.g. your required hardness range is 50-100 Hv5 , Standard clock can be of 75 Hv5.Standred block need to be procured separately.

After Deciding above key points you can go ahead with your exact requirement of  hardness testing machine and you can avoid expenses on unnecessary things proposed by machine supplier.