Method

The described technology of stainless steel surfaces treatment is based upon the plasma nitriding of the component in micropulse plasma, when nitriding atmosphere with a significant amount of methane is used. The process is performed so that a layer of iron and other chemical elements creating carbonitride may be formed on the surface of nitrided components. The formed layer is characterized by very good mechanical properties, e.g. an excellent abrasion resistance, low friction coefficient and high layer hardness. Experimental Steel X12CrNi 18 8 (1.4300) was used for the experiment. Chemical composition according to DIN standard measured by GDOES method and verified for selected chemical elements by EDXS method is presented in Table 1. Plasma nitriding process was carried out (1) on the PN 60/60 equipment according to parameters in Table 2. For experiment three samples were used, sample 3.0 was non-treated