Heat Treatment Process & Furnace Details by Aichelin Ges.mbH

Highlights 1. Heat Treatment Processes for Alloys 2. The Function of a Heat Treatment Furnace

Heat Treatment Processes for Alloys There are a lot of speciďŹ c processes to inuence the characteristics of alloys; the most common are :

Annealing or Normalizing To reduce internal stresses or hardness, to increase ductility.

Stress Relieving To minimize residual stresses to reduce dimensional changes.

Hardening & Tempering To impact speciďŹ c mechanical properties.

Case Hardening By infusing elements like carbon or nitrogen or their combinations and to impact the hardening process.

Solution Annealing & Ageing For light metals (e.g. aluminum) to impact the mechanical properties.

The Function of a Heat Treatment Furnace The functioning of a heat treatment furnace can be described by its design.

In the simplest case, a batch type heat treatment furnace consists of an enclosure with a door for loading and unloading with internal insulation and heating. In principle, the furnace has to fulfil the following tasks:

Task 1

Transfer of the material to be heated into the furnace, mainly under exclusion of the ambient air, e.g. through air locks

Task 2

Task 3

Task 4

Task 5

Task 6

Heating the material to the desired target temperature at a defined heating rate, possibly interrupted by times for temperature equalization in the workpiece.

Heating can be done in ambient air (e.g. for aluminum) or in a protective or active gas composition (e.g. for steel).

Holding at the target temperature for a defined time, possibly changing the gas composition to achieve chemical-metallu rgical processes in the material.

Defined, sometimes rapid cooling or quenching under ambient air, a gas or a liquid (quenching oil, polymers, water or liquid salts).

Removal of the heat treatment material from the furnace or the associated liquid bath.

The Function of a Heat Treatment Furnace (Continued)

For increased throughput these processes can be carried out in continuous furnaces with several loads simultaneously, which are transported semi-continuous through the furnace.

AICHELIN is one of the leading companies for Atmosphere-based Industrial Furnaces and Systems for the heat treatment of metal components.

At AICHELIN, each of our Heat treatment plant is unique. The goal is always to find the best solution in terms of Technology, Price and Economy for the respective customer’s requirement.

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