This treatment is a soft nitriding process applied on metals, particularly steels, cast irons, and stainless steels.
It is specifically used to harden the skin of the metallic surface, but also has secondary advantages like improved scuffing and galling resistance increased fatigue strength and in very thin sheet metal parts an increase of Cross sectional strength is also noticed. This treatment being in the ferritic range of processing makes the components to be distortion free and hence the parts can be fully machined before dipping into this process.
Oxidizing is the sequential process done after the Surface treatment. This helps in improving the corrosion resistance of the parts already treated by the previous process. Hence, in addition to the all the properties achieved after Nitriding & oxidizing, we get the benefit of added corrosion resistance & increased surface hardness. The increase in hardness depends on the type of steel treated.
