Influence of heat treatment on hysteresis error of force transducers manufactured from 17-4PH stainless steel

Different heat treatment processes can be applied on the spring element of a force transducer in order to obtain good and satisfactory performance. The study covers the attempts of different heat treatments on spring element using 17-4PH precipitation hardened stainless steel, which is regarded as one of the best and popular spring materials for force sensor applications. Heat treatments named as H900, H925, H1025, H1150 and S450 was applied, and different hardness values were reached. Especially, S450 heat treatment process was improved in this study. It was observed that heat treatments influenced the transducer performance, particularly hysteresis behaviour point of view. The results have shown that; hysteresis characteristics were improved with increasing hardness and sub-zero treatment process.