A significant number of alloyed metals applied for different purposes are currently available in industry. The hardness of a piece is an important parameter to consider. The tempering process is widely used to change a metal’s hardness, which is obtained using a hardness test. Once the response is obtained, a way to evaluate the system is by performing an analysis of variance to verify the significance of terms and obtain a regression equation to improve the response. The aim of this work is to illustrate the implementation of an experimental approach based on the steepest ascent method and stopping rules for optimization purposes by considering the hardening process of the steel alloy 4140. The regression coefficients obtained from an experimental design were used to build the steepest path of improvement. The Myers and Khuri stopping rule and the enhanced parabolic stopping rule were applied to determine the best value while individual experimentation is developed. The obtained results, discussion, and a conclusive analysis are disclosed in this document.

FeCrCB alloys have become an attractive option as a hardfacing coating to extend the service life of tools used in primary and secondary industries. In this work, experiments are reported on the sintering of FeCrCB alloy powders for hardfacing coatings by modifying the CO₂/CO ratio using six different atmospheric gas conditions. The hardfacing coating was found to have higher microhardness and higher abrasion resistance under a 10C atmosphere. This increase in mechanical properties is related to the microstructure, as the atmosphere using 10C promotes the formation of a higher quantity of hard phases, while the presence of CO induces the formation of higher volumetric fractions of eutectic phases, and, consequently, lower abrasion resistance is obtained.