A new design and automation of Rockwell hardness standard machine

A new dead weight type Rockwell hardness standard machine with a laser interferometer optic system was designed for TSE (Turkish Standards Institution) in the scope of TÜB̄TAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) Project∗ with project number 111G068. The scope of this project is mainly based on covering the requirements of a government agency by making R&D in the related field and it is funded by the TÜB̄TAK. A Rockwell hardness standard machine had been previously designed and established at UME (National Metrology Institute of Turkey) Hardness Laboratory as a National Standard to provide traceability for Rockwell hardness reference blocks calibration. In the new TÜB̄TAK Project it is aimed to design a new Rockwell Hardness machine for the TSE with at least similar metrological performance to and more automatic hardness measurement capability than UME machine. Traceability of each component constituting Rockwell Hardness scales such as force application, depth measurement and realization of testing cycle to national standards is provided by direct calibration. To realize performance tests of the machine as a whole, hardness reference blocks calibrated by the PTB (National Metrology Institute of Germany) and UME were planned to be used. In this paper, Rockwell Hardness Standard Machine designed by TÜB̄TAK UME Hardness Laboratory for the TSE is introduced and its performance test results performed so far are interpreted.