Heat treatment is one of the most important manufacturing processes applied to metallic materials. It comprises a myriad of thermal and metalworking techniques that affect physical, mechanical and chemical properties of metals and alloys.
Heat treatment is the process of controlled heating and cooling metals in order to obtain some desired properties.
The processes could be for the whole component to impact global mechanical properties such as annealing, normalizing, stress relieving, hardening, tempering, solutionizing, etc., or done to change surface chemistry and/or physical characteristics such as in carburizing, nitriding, carbonitriding, nitrocarburizing, induction hardening, etc.
Heat treatments typically involve three or four steps:
