Heat treatment is the process used to modify the physical and mechanical properties of metal without altering the materials formation. It usually increased the strength of material. It is also used to modify the objective of some material aspect manufacture-ability like, improving the machine process, to improve its formability and restoring ductility after the cooling treatment. Somehow, it is also used to manufacture certain materials like glass. It also improves the performance of materials.
Usually in the process of Metallurgical, the heat treatment is being applied. To attain the preferred outcome such as hardening and softening of the product, the process of heat treatment includes the heating and chilling of such product from moderate to extreme high temperature. The heat treating process methods involves precipitation strengthening, case hardening, annealing, tempering and quenching.
Heat treatment process consists of a series of operations which have as their aim the improvement of physical properties of a material. In the case of steel these operations are hardening, which is composed of quenching and heating and tempering. For this process of heating, special large ovens are used which are big enough to store the work piece in right position in order to get the maximum exposure to the heated air in oven. For the high volume process annealing, special gas fired conveyor furnaces are used mainly. For the large work pieces or for high quality parts, especially the carbon bottom furnaces are used. These work pieces are often quickly cooled, once the process is completed.
