Heat Treatment

Heat treatment is a method used to alter the physical, and sometimes chemical, properties of a material

Heat treatment involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to extreme temperatures, to achieve a desired result such as hardening or softening of a material.

	Annealing Annealing is achieved with heat treatment processes that require a neutral (or inert) controlled atmosphere.
	Brazing Brazing allow diverse configurations of parts, dissimilar metals and non-metals of non-uniform thickness to be joined.
	Carburizing & Carbonitriding A carburizing atmosphere must be able to transfer carbon (also nitrogen in the case of carbonitriding) to steel surface.
	Galvanising The use of nitrogen for gas wiping of galvanised strip and wire has been widely adopted to give a better surface finish.
	Hardening Neutral hardening is a heat treatment procedure for steels with the aim to produce a martensitic microstructure.
	Nitriding & Nitrocarburizing These processes involve the diffusion of nitrogen into the surface layers of a low carbon steel at elevated temperature.
	Quenching & Cooling The use of gas quenching in a vacuum furnaces has advantages over both conventional processing and liquid quenching
	Sintering Sintering produces parts that are harder (martenistic) and/or tougher (martenistic/bainitic) by controlled the cooling rate.
	Sub Zero Treatments Use a moderately cold process for stabilisation and austenite removal or deep cold to improve wear resistance.
	Other Applications These range from Autoclaving to Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP)