Penghancuran dan pemaduan mekanik (Mechanical Milling and Alloying, MM/MA) merupakan salah satu teknik yang mudah untuk menghaluskan ukuran butir hingga mencapai skala nano. Telah diketahui pula bahwa dispersi partikel oksida yang halus memiliki peranan yang penting untuk menjaga struktur butir baja tetap halus dengan efek mempertahankan batas butir. Dalam studi ini, pasir besi sebagai sumber oksida besi ditambahkan pada matriks Fe untuk menghasilkan baja berstruktur halus melalui metode pemaduan mekanik dan metalurgi bubuk.
Kandungan oksigen disimpulkan tidak mempengaruhi derajat penghalusan partikel selama proses pemaduan mekanik. Hingga 100 jam pemaduan mekanik didapatkan ukuran kristalit dengan variasi kandungan oksigen berkisar pada 20 nm dan kekerasan Vickers mencapai 1.30 GPa. Proses konsolidasi dilakukan dengan metode pengerolan panas pada temperatur rendah 550ºC.
Pada penelitian ini, tidak berhasil dipertahankan variasi kandungan oksigen pada bulk material hasil proses konsolidasi. Diyakini telah terjadi kontaminasi oksigen selama pengerolan panas sehingga terjadi peningkatan kandungan oksigen dan pengkasaran. Namun bulk material ini memiliki kekerasan Vickers yang cukup baik dengan nilai sekitar 2~3 Gpa.
Mechanical milling and alloying (MM/MA) has been known as an easy refinement method to obtain nano-structured material. It is also known that very fine iron oxide particles play an important role to keep the grain size fine through the effect of grain boundary pinning. In this study, iron sand as source of iron oxide has been added into Fe matrix to achieve ultra fine grained steel by mechanical alloying and powder metallurgy.It is concluded that oxygen content has no effect to particle refinement degree during mechanical alloying process. After 100 hours mechanical alloying, we obtained crystallite size for all oxygen-varied specimens were about 20 nm and Vickers hardness reached 1.30 GPa. Subsequent consolidation process was carried out by hot rolling at low temperature 550ºC.In this research, we were unable to retain oxygen content variation in bulk material obtained by consolidation process. It was due to excessive oxygen contamination during hot rolling gave oxygen content increasing and coarsening. However, these bulk materials have considerably good Vickers hardness, which was around 2~3 GPa.
