EXCEPTIONALLY ROBUST, ACCURATE PORTABLE HARDNESS TESTER
The Abbey Group: Based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, the traditional UK heartland of steel production, the Abbey Group has grown to become one of Europe’s leading metal forging and stainless steel suppliers. Boasting a large metal stockholding and short lead times for metal product manufacturing, the company remains focused on delivering high-quality steel and manufactured products at the right price. The use of the most up to date technology, combined with the traditional skills of Abbey’s experienced team, enables the company to provide an exceptional service to its growing customer base.
ISO14001 accredited and NORSOK standard M-650 approved for F44, F55 and F51 metal grades, the Abbey Group offers a comprehensive range of steel services including standard and bespoke metal forgings, an extensive stock of stainless steel, low alloy and super-alloy grades, and a rapid turn-around Express Service for bespoke projects. The group also offers independent metal testing from its Metal Testing UK division, plus a comprehensive machining/finishing service.
The Abbey Group’s Metal Treatment division handles a wide range of materials from low alloy carbon steels through to heat resisting nickel based superalloys. The busy division’s bespoke, gas-fired batch furnaces are serviced by two dedicated charging machines, providing a huge metal treatment capability. The department’s applied treatments include, solution annealing up to 1200C, normalizing, hardening and tempering, stress relieving and age hardening. The entire high-tech Treatment plant is controlled by state of the art instrumentation and surveyed to international standards, including RPS 953. The Abbey Group has made substantial investments in its facilities, enabling Metal Treatment UK to guarantee that all customers’ heat treatment requirements are completed to the highest possible standards.
As the quality of treated material is of paramount importance to the Abbey Group, the experienced Metal Treatment UK team is supported by a range of exacting inspection equipment. When the need arises, regular investments are made in the best available quality control equipment, an illustration of the company’s investment in quality is their recently purchased hardness tester. Although the department has a high-quality static hardness testing machine, in addition to several portable units, to keep pace with the output from the busy department, Metal Treatment UK, Production Manager, Martin Trigg recently undertook a search for an extremely accurate portable hardness tester.
“As the new instrument was to be used in an extremely harsh environment, it needed to be exceptionally robust, whilst being able to deliver very accurate hardness results” said Martin. “We found the ideal answer to our needs in the King Brinell hardness tester from Bowers Metrology. The tough, yet precise instrument is now used across all materials passing through our department. As we serve a wide range of very demanding industries, such as the Oil, Gas and Petrochemical sectors, our flexible new tester helps us to record the vitally important results we achieve. To ensure the continued accuracy of our hardness testing routines, we make regular tests on our calibrated test blocks that are traceable back to UKAS standards.”
The new, high accuracy King Brinell Portable Hardness Tester is a lightweight, full-load (3000kg) instrument capable of accurately testing an extremely large variety of metal specimens. The rugged tester’s portability allows it to be used in any plane for a full load, in-situ Brinell test on large components. The advanced instrument conforms to ASTM BS and NIST Brinell standards, it features a dynamic rapid hardness test procedure, an extremely wide measuring range and ease of use.
For more information on the King Brinell Portable Hardness Tester, click here.
Published on January 11, 2011 11:53