Heat Treatment Process Definition, Latest Methods & Its Importance

Every Product Designer wants to make a product with better durability and strength. Heat Treatment process is one such method where in strength of product can be improved. It is used to alter the physical(Casting,Forging,Mould etc) and chemical properties(Microstructure) of a material under specific conditions. It is also used in the manufacture of many other materials, such as glass. Basically it involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to extreme temperature, to attain a desired result such as hardening or softening of a material.

Fig: Heat Treating - Aluminum Cooper Equilibrium Diagram

For example, see the effect of Heat Treatment on the microstructure and Hardness of Chromium-Nickel Steel.

From the product design point of view, Heat Treatment can also be used to alter certain manufacturability characteristics like machinability,formability,restore ductility after a cold working operation,improving hardness(Rockwell and Brinell hardness testing) and many. In a modern technology, Heat Treating is an essential step in a great percentage of manufacturing processes.

Heat treatment process differs based on product/component application and its functionality. It can provide significant savings in the weight of material required for a given component. Heat Treatment process also provides a payback by means of longer service life of treated products, fewer part replacements, reduced maintenance and machine downtime resulting in saving cost and time.

If your not familiar with Heat Treatment process and latest methods used in Industry here is the site(Wisconsin oven corporation) will help you learn about following topics:

Aging

-Aluminum Heat Treatment Terms T4,T5,T6

-Batch Aluminum Age ovens

-Continuous Aluminum Age ovens

Annealing

-Annealing purpose like machinability,cold working,improving mechanical properties

-Annealing types like Black Annealing,Flame Annealing,Graphitizing,Isothermal Annealing,Quench Annealing and Speroidizing.

-Batch Heat Treating ovens

-Continuous Heat Treating ovens

Baking

-What is Baking : Heating process in order to remove entrained gases

-Batch and Walk in ovens

-Continuous ovens

Direct Gas Fired

-Use of Direct Gas Firing

Drawing

-Draw Batch ovens

-Continuous Heat Treating ovens

Heat Treatment

Heat Treatment solution

Normalizing

Preheating

Quenching

Stress Relieving

Tempering

- Objective of Tempering : To reduce brittleness in hardened steel and to remove internal strains.

- Temperature conditions

T4

T5

T6

Apart from these various Heat Treatment process definitions, you will get a chance to know about Pit type furnace,Retort Furnace etc.,

I wish this article would help to get deep insight of Heat Treating, latest methods in various alloys, and its impact on manufacturing process.