Cracking at hot flattening

[MagBen]

I have a "brittle" material (Mn-Ir antiferromagnetic alloy), cracking is often created right after hot flattening or, at water jet. Micros analysis indicates an intergranular cracking. so decreasing grain size could help, but decreasing hot roll temp for smaller grain can crack material at roll.

Do you have any specifics or some sort of rule of thumb on how to prevent cracking? Could putting it back to the furnace after flattening to anneal help?

Thanks in advance!

 

[EdStainless]

Have you looked at the intergranular phases?
Is there something brittle collecting in the GBs?
You may need to go back and change some HT way back at the beginning of the process.
This sounds like a job for someone versed in ICME.

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P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed

 

[MagBen]

This is 3N5, pretty clean material. S is controlled super low at <1 ppm level, but oxygen is high at hundreds of ppm.
what beginning processes are you referring, casting? we donot do any special HT (but hold at 1100C for 2hrs) before hot rolling. It is a pretty thin (1'') ingot casted in a metal mold.
btw, what is ICME?

 

[EdStainless]

Should you homogenize before hot rolling?
Maybe adjust the hot work temp.
Integrated computational material engineering, using basic physics to calculate material properties and response to HT.
Check out Questek.
I figured that it was clean material, but that doesn't mean that you aren't inadvertently forming a phase that you don't want.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed