subject: Heat Treatment Enhancing The Power Of Metal [print this page] The controlled and systematic heating and cooling down of metals is called heat treatment. These exposures to extreme temperatures help to change the physical and mechanical attributes of metals. But one thing should be kept in mind when going through the process the shape of the metal product remains unchanged. Manufacturing procedures like welding and forming include heat treatment, which is either to heat or cool down metal in high degrees, inadvertently as a basic step in the whole procedure. Techniques of heat treatment have a series of processes. But before we get into these details we should go a bit deeper into the micro-structure of the metals.
Metals constitute of micro-structures, which are like grains of crystals, known as crystallites, packed together to make a unit of a micro-structure. These crystals may vary in mass and size. The nature of these crystals determines the mechanical properties of a metal. By heat treatment one can change the overall properties of these crystals. Thereby, heat treatment can also manipulate the overall mechanical properties of metals. In a Heat treatment company, the rate of diffusion in metals can be changed and moreover the rate of cooling the metals take to cool down after going through heavy heating is also changed. Alloys are often used for their mechanical properties; by using complex heat treatment procedures metal workers increase this property of alloys. A super alloy, which is used in the aerospace industry, sometimes has to undergo five or even more different heat treatments to get the desired results.
A Heat treatment company thus increase the efficiency of the mechanics, to better the formability of the metal and regain its ductile property which is often affected due to working in very cold environments. But this process can have various other uses in other manufacturing procedures too.
Out of all other metals and materials steel production needs heat treatment the most. Steel responds very easily to heat and therefore one can rely on heat treatment to get suitable results. In the commercial market steel is always the most sought after material. No other material can match the demand of steel. So, we can deduce that this treatment or process is a very vital aspect of todays industrial and commercial world. Heat treatment helps the steel in improving its mechanical efficiency by, softening, hardening and material modification.
Softening: this is particularly done to increase the elasticity of steel. It helps the steel to regain its ductility, in the process decreasing its power and removing residual stresses. Interestingly softening can also be used to change the electromagnetic characteristics of the steel and it also purifies the grain size in the steel.
Hardening: literally it is the opposite of softening and even practically in case of heat treatment of steel, it increase the hardness of the steel, making it less ductile in the process.
Material Modification: Material modification is done to manipulate the properties of steel, other than hardening and softening.
by: John Samual
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