Cooling And Heating Metals

In our last blog post we covered the three stages of heat treatment that include heating the metal to a set temperature the heating stage keeping it at that temperature for a specific length of time the soaking stage and cooling it down to room temperature with a method that depends on the type of metal and the desired properties the cooling stage.

Cooling and heating metals.

The process involves heating the metal to a specific temperature then allowing it to cool slowly at a controlled rate. Most steels must be cooled rapidly to harden them. When we pass an electric current through a piece of wire it gets hot. We can use the same idea to heat up steel in an electric arc furnace.

The temperatures metals are heated to and the rate of cooling after heat treatment can significantly change metal s properties. An electric arc furnace. Cooling for metal fabrication delivering the temperature control capabilities needed to ensure the success of metal fabrication many processing steps apply heat to a workpiece. This can affect dimensions and material structure.

Annealing is frequently used to soften metals including iron steel copper brass and silver. In ferrous alloys annealing is usually accomplished by heating the metal beyond the upper critical temperature and then cooling very slowly resulting in the formation of pearlite. The photograph shows how hot it gets. A ferrous metal is normally hardened by heating the metal to the required temperature and then cooling it rapidly by plunging the hot metal into a quenching medium such as oil water or brine.

Heat treatment is the process of heating and cooling metals to change their microstructure and to bring out the physical and mechanical characteristics that make metals more desirable. In both pure metals and many alloys that cannot be heat treated annealing is used to remove the hardness caused by cold working. Annealing alters the physical and chemical properties of the metal to increase ductility and reduce hardness.