A hardness test is a method used to measure the hardness of a material. Hardness refers to a material’s resistance to permanent indentation.
There are mainly two types of hardness testers largely used in the industries – benchtop and portable.
Bench Hardness Testers
A classic hardness tester is measuring the hardness by the standard method of Brinell, Rockwell, Vickers, Shore, and so on. As a rule, the name of the hardness tester includes the title of the hardness scale.
For example, bench Brinell hardness tester or bench Rockwell hardness tester. There are bench hardness testers that allow users to measure the hardness not only by one scale but also by several hardness scales. For example, there is a bench hardness tester that allows users to measure hardness by Rockwell, Brinell, and Vickers scales.
All Bench hardness testers are big and heavy (more than 50 kg), also these units should be installed on a table or floor. The main advantage of such devices is the implementation of the classic, direct method of measuring hardness.
Portable Hardness Testers
In contrast to the bench hardness testers, have small sizes, are lightweight and they are compact devices that measure the hardness by several hardness scales. Usually, the modern portable hardness testers can measure the hardness of all hardness scales.
The advantage of portable hardness testers is allowing the users to take the device and get it to the measuring samples. You needn’t take samples into the workshops. Portable hardness testers is an electronic device, so they usually have a set of useful features. The user can save the results of measurements in the internal storage, after that the results can be transmitted to a computer for creating a report of controlling in a specialized program which is supplied with the portable hardness testers.
Portable hardness testers – in contrast to the bench hardness testers, have a few advantages, but there are some cases when they can be solved only by the bench hardness testers. However, such cases are very rare and we can say that in 99 cases out of 100, users can use the portable device.
As a rule, the most useful and handy are portable devices. That’s why it is the best solution.
Hardness Testing Considerations:
The following sample characteristics should be considered prior to select the hardness testing method to use:
- Material
- Sample Size
- Thickness
- Scale
- Shape of sample, round, cylindrical, flat, irregular
- Gage R & R
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