The Rockwell Metal Hardness Scales Explained

Using An Ames Portable Metal Hardness Tester

We’re going to be testing a customer’s sample piece on her Model 1a standard Ames portable hardness tester.  The purpose of this demonstration is to show you just how easy it is to operate the tester as a sample piece or using a small clip. It is a hard material spring-type steel.  I’m using a diamond penetrator for the flat Anvil.   I’m going to be measuring in the C scale which requires a 10-kg minor load and I’ve got a  150 kg major load.  First thing I want to do is initialize the Dow indicator Itself by rotating the setting of the stylus of the indicator. Next we’re going to trap the part between the Anvil and the penetrator and I’m going to establish my 10 kg. load. Simply do that by rotating the handwheel and the pin correctly. Next we want to establish the zeo point on the tester itself. To do that we  rotate barrel down and rest the pin directly on the magnifer. Next we will rotate the handwheel to 150. Once that is set, reverse the handwheel back to the set point. What you see is the C scale numbers in black and B scale numbers in red. We are looking at the C scale.  You can see the line underneath the number 40 there’s a thick line and then off on the left hand side there’s little hash marks each one of those small hash marks is 2 points.  The large broad line underneath the number itself is the whole number or in this case 40.  You can see it set up in 10 point increments.  So what we’re looking at is 40 which is the black line underneath the 40 and then we’re sitting right between the broad and hash mark which makes it a 41.  We want to thank you for your attention should you have questions please feel free to contact us by email telephone.

The first thing we are going to do is, with no load applied we want to lift this needle and make sure it’s below that set mark and pointed right at the dot. The next thing we’re going to do is just make sure all our components are tight so starting with the anvil, the extension and the anvil adapter and finally our penetrator, just make sure all of those are finger tight.