In this article, you learn what is the heat treatment process? Its methods, types, and the purpose, procedure, application of heat treatment. Heat treatment is an essential operation in the manufacturing process of machine parts and tools.
What is Heat Treatment Process?
Heat treatment is defined as an operation involving the heating and cooling of a metal or an alloy in the solid-state to obtain certain desirable properties without change composition.
The process of heat treatment is carried out to change the grain size, to modify the structure of the material, and to relieve the stresses set up the material after hot or cold working.
- The heat treatment is done to improve the machinability.
- To improve magnetic and electrical properties.
- To increase resistance to wear, heat and corrosion, and much more reason.
Heat treatment consists of heating the metal near or above its critical temperature, held for a particular time at that finally cooling the metal in some medium which may be air, water, brine, or molten salts. The heat treatment process includes annealing, case hardening, tempering, normalizing and quenching, nitriding, cyaniding, etc.
Types of Heat Treatment Processes
Following are the different types of heat treatment processes:
- Annealing
- Normalizing
- hardening
- Tempering
- Nitriding
- Cyaniding
- Induction Hardening
- Flame Hardening
Read more: Heat Treatment Processes: Types, Methods, Procedure, Applications