OVEN AND AIR AND ATMOSPHERE HEAT TREATMENT

Annealing
We provide a range of annealing treatments in both air and atmosphere. These processes are used to restore the material to its ‘soft’ condition to allow for further processing to be carried out, be that either further machining or heat treatment.

Normalising
We can provide normalising treatments to a wide range of materials. Normalising is used to homogenise the structure of the material to ensure the materials mechanical properties.

Stress Relieving
Particualry suitable for welded or machined parts stress relieve minimise distortion is minimised normalise the steel.

Stress Relieving removes internal residual stresses from steels. The stresses may have come from the steel making mills, machining, forming, welding etc. If residual stresses are not removed prior to hardening, distortion may occur, whilst if stresses are left in components before they go into service, then premature failures can result, as well as more subtle movement causing the parts to go out of tolerance.

To Stress relieve steels, heat the parts to the desired temperature (depending on material) for a minimum of one hour or till the whole part reaches the temperature. This will remove most of the internal stresses. After removing from the furnace, they are air cooled in still air.

Precipitation Hardening
Precipitation Hardening, also known as Age Hardening, is used to increase the yield strength of specific materials. Hardness of the materials is also increased.

This is process delivers excellent results for annealing aluminium and hardening PH Steel.

Parts to be treated are initially machined in the soft (solution treated) condition before precipitation hardened at relatively low temperatures to produce the required properties

Stainless steels such as 17.4ph can be precipitation hardened to a range of
conditions in air and this can be a very cost effect method of treatment if vacuum treatment is not essential.