PERANCANGAN EKSPERIMEN BAJA KARBON RENDAH HASIL PROSES PACK CARBURIZING DENGAN METODE EKSPERIMEN FAKTORIAL

Low carbon steel is potential as alternative raw material of oil palm harvestingtools type chisel beside medium carbon steel. Pack carburizing process is the process to improve surface hardness of the material, usually applied for low carbon steel. In this process, surfaceproperties oflow carbon steel will be transformed tohard metal surfaces withductile properties on the inside. In this research, pack carburizingexperiments were carried out with 3 independent variables which are autenization temperature, holding time, and composition of the carbon paste. To achieve optimum hardness of low carbon steel on pack carburizing process, design of experiment is required to get valid experiment results. Design of experiment method which is used to solve the problem is factorial experiment with 3 factors and 2 levels. The purpose of this research is to find out the factor and interaction factor that influence the hardness of low carbon steel and find out optimum level of factor that yield desired hardness level of low carbon steel. Based on design of experiment of low carbon steel hardness with factorial experiment method, factor that has significant effect to hardness of low carbon steel is holding time variables. Holding time result with high hardness value is 30 minutes. While mathematical model for experiment of low carbon steel hardness resulted from carburizing process is y = 50.32 – 3.313 X2, where y is hardness and X2 is holding time.