Heat treating is used to alter the physical, and sometimes chemical, properties of a material.

The most
common application is metallurgical. Heat treatments are also used in the manufacture of many other
materials, such as glass. Heat treatment involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to extreme
temperatures, to achieve the desired result such as hardening or softening of a material. Heat treatment
techniques include annealing, case hardening, tempering, carburizing, normalizing and hardening. There
are many ways to alter the ways metals perform and react to precision machining. One of these
methods is heat treating. Heat treating can be applied to the part before to make the material more
machinable, or the components may be machined before the final hardening and heating stages. Heat
treating can affect a number of different aspects of the metal including strength, hardness, toughness,
machinability, formability, ductility, and elasticity. It can also affect the physical and mechanical
properties of metal to change the use of the metal or alter future work on the metal. Here we take a
closer look at the different types of heat treating and how these affect the parts during precision
machining. Heat Treatment Processes have 2 classifications which is Full Heat Treatment and Surface
Heat Treatment. Full Heat Treatment consist Recrystallization Annealing Process, Full Annealing
Process, Partial Annealing Process, Process Annealing Processes, Spheroidizing Annealing Process,
Normalizing, Hardening, Tempering, Austempering, and Martempering. HARDENING, In heat treating
to harden a metal, the metal is heated to a temperature where the elements in the metal become a
solution. Before doing this, defects in the crystal lattice structure of metal are the primary source of
‘give’ or plasticity. Heat treating addresses those deficiencies by bringing the metal into a reliable
solution with fine particles to strengthen the metal. Once the metal is thoroughly heated to the right
temperature to produce a solid solution, it is quickly quenched to trap the particles in solution.
ANNEALING is a heat treatment method where a metal such as aluminum, copper, steel, silver, or
brass is heated to a specific temperature, held at that temperature for some time to allow
transformation to occur, and then air cooled. This process increases the metal’s ductility and
decreases hardness to make the metal more workable. Copper, silver, and brass can be cooled quickly
or slowly, whereas ferrous metals like steel must always be cooled gradually to allow annealing to
occur. Annealing may be used before a metal is machined to improve its stability, making harder
materials less likely to crack or fracture. NORMALIZING is an annealing process for steel where it is
heated 150-200°F higher than in annealing and held at the critical temperature long enough for the
transformation to occur. Steel treated in this way must be air cooled. The heat treating in
normalization causes smaller austenitic grains, while air cooling produces more refined ferritic grains.
This process improves machinability, ductility, and strength of the steel. Standardization is also useful
to remove columnar grains and dendritic segregation that can occur during the casting of a part.
TEMPERING is a method of heat treating used to increase the resilience of iron-based alloys like steel.
Iron-based metals are very hard, but they are often too brittle to be useful for most purposes.
Tempering can be used to change the hardness, ductility, and strength of metal, which usually makes
it easier to machine. The metal will be heated to a temperature below the critical point as lower
temperatures reduce brittleness while maintaining hardness.  For increased plasticity with less
hardness and strength, higher temperatures are required. Surfaces Treatment consist CASE
HARDENING, In the process of case hardening, the external layer of metal is hardened while the
interior metal remains soft. For metals with a low carbon content such as iron and steel, additional
carbon has to be infused into the surface. Case hardening is a process often used as a final step after
the piece has already been machined. High heat is used in combination with other elements and
chemicals to produce a hardened outer layer. Because hardening can make metals more brittle, case
hardening can be useful for applications that require a flexible metal with a durable wear layer. Case
Hardening consist Carburizing, Cyaniding, Nitriding and Carbonitriding. CARBURIZING is a
thermochemical process in which carbon is diffused into the surface of low carbon steels to increase
the carbon content to sufficient levels so that the surface will respond to heat treatment and produce
a hard, wear-resistant layer. It is consist of z There are methods of cooling that we can use for
example, in the use of sand, water oil, use of air temperature or room temperature.