imsmooth Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 When I heat a piece of steel in my induction heater I will get scale after a certain temperature. How do I minimize this? I am not able to reduce the oxygen content in the room or blow inert gas on the metal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macbruce Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Switch to wrought iron.... :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigfootnampa Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Fluxes can be useful. Many knife makers use a flux specifically designed to minimize scale. i don't know the name of it but there are people here who use it and can tell you. I hear that it is extremely effective. ANY flux can help somewhat. You get into a decision dilemma with cost and time where there is not sufficient reward when dealing with mild steels but for expensive alloys for which a refined finish is desired there may be sufficient reward to make the use of the flux profitable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigfootnampa Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Okay, it's called "Firescoff". To me it appears to be a commercial version of Prip's flux. Try googling both of those and you'll get plenty of info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich Hale Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Scale is a fact of heated steel above a certain temp in a normal atmosphere. We knew that but there are ways of minimizing or eliminating it. But you did say no inert gas, and I would guess you are not working with wrought iron. Flux may indeed work but not haveing any working knowledge of induction processes I am not sure what if any effect flux would have if it gets on the coils. Two ways I do know that work for me in a gasser and in coal fires. Minimize the times it is heated. I had to learn to obtasin heat management and forging skills to do this. And a butcher block brush is my friend. I brush hard and often. And brush scale from the anvil each time I have steel back in for heat. If you leave scale on anvil it will leave dents in work. At times I can tap the piece on the anvil horn just as I pull from fire to remove a little bit of scale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Stegall Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 Why can't you use Argon blown on the piece? It's really very cheap, though I didn't think induction forges had a lot of it. Gas forges generally are pretty forgiving from a scale point of view. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattBower Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 I have used boric acid as an anti-scale for heat treating. It does a good job of protecting the steel from oxidation up to about 1600 F. Beyond that it reverses course and starts to attack the steel fairly aggressively. It's probably not what you want for your purpose, since you'll want to heat well beyond 1600 for any heavy forging. Just thought I'd throw it out there. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than that Firescoff stuff! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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