If heat treatment technology has ever been perceived as an afterthought, well, nothing could be further from the truth. This is an essential process regimen, a series of techniques that equips metal parts with tailored material properties. Hardness is usually regarded as the primary reason for altering these already robust alloys, but that’s not always the case, especially in large engineering projects.
How Important is Heat Treatment Technology?
Critically important, that would be the short answer. The construction techniques employed on large-scale building projects may use the latest construction techniques, the best welders and mechanical fasteners, but these framework assets don’t mean much without a properly heat-treated structural alloy. That metal cage is hard, workable, load capable, and entirely weather-resistant. Granted, the expert services of a top-notch machine shop are responsible for creating the high-tolerance profiles of the beams and support components, but it’s the heat treatment stage that ensures the base material is perfectly suited for the project.
Setting Process Priorities
Just because the heat treatment phase is positioned at the end of the machining work, that doesn’t mean this result-critical stage should ever be postponed. We reschedule meetings and dental appointments, not a process stage that ingrains principal mechanical components with their fundamental physical characteristics. The project absolutely requires load-bearing structural parts that can endure, that can withstand projected stress levels. That’s a cardinal rule in this industrial domain, one that’s infringed when the project director doesn’t realise the importance of material altering technology. Basically, heat treatment determines the entire backbone of the structure, not just its finish or weathering properties.
Preventing Budget Blow-Outs
If a project falls behind schedule, there are budgetary concerns to consider. Penalties may be incurred, so executives look for shortcuts. Oftentimes, the cutting budgetary blade slices the heat treatment work in two. The annealing and normalising stations are swiftly navigated, the quenching is incautiously concluded, and final tests are rushed. Certainly, this cut-back processing methodology cannot safely be employed within the framework of a large engineering venture, so the metal components are finished as ordered, but only by accommodating ballooning budgetary demands.
The resulting heat treated parts satisfy all project demands, so the alloy is mechanically and chemically acceptable. Still, the budget blow-out, the time constraint issues, perhaps even a question over the metal’s quality, all of these factors make the source heat treatment company look inefficient. In point of fact, this circumstance occurs through no fault of the heat treatment facility. The fault is in not comprehending the essential role of this processing stage, its place as a project investment, not an added expense.
This fully contained heat treatment procedure is usually tendered by Alpha Detroit when a workpiece requires a mechanically enhanced, metallurgically consistent finish. Therefore, to answer the initial question, it is possible to oil quench materials from a vacuum furnace, but this technique should only be called upon when superior mechanical properties and a perfectly clean end-line product is specified.
Superior Tensile Strength
Raised to its transformative temperature in the vacuum furnace, the workpiece remains in the vacuum until it’s transferred to the quenching oil. Back at the airless furnace, there are no convection currents or oxidation effects to corrupt the uniform hardening process. Likewise, as the component cools rapidly in the oil quenching chamber, its uniform cooling curve evenly tempers the hardened alloy so that it’s free of weak spots.
A Multi-chambered Furnace Architecture
A furnace is an isolated heat treatment asset. A quenching station is similarly self-contained. In multi-chambered vacuum furnace setups, though, the furnace occupies one chamber, the quench enclosure occupies another, and both chambers are contained inside a single overreaching housing. In effect, the superheated component is discharged from its sealed oven, conveyed to the oil chamber, rapidly cooled in that oil, and ejected so that the cycle can begin anew. Meanwhile, the vacuum in the two adjacent but sealed chambers prevents carburization or decarburization, an undesirable process event that causes carbon molecules on the surface of the worked component to react with atmospheric gases. Essentially, if there are no atmospheric gases present, there can be no carburization, so the part leaves the furnace and cooling chamber clean.
Vacuum Oil Quenching Advantages
If the atmosphere in a furnace creates problems, imagine those problems when a vaporised oil complicates matters. An incautiously conducted quenching cycle can cause parts distortion, or it can even leave residual stresses intact inside the component piece. Nucleate boiling and vapour phased oils complicate this situation. Fortunately, a vacuum oil quenching chamber sidesteps these issues. It once again removes gaseous convection currents so that the component cools evenly. Granted, that cooling effect is rapid, but it still delivers uniformly hardened and tempered workpieces because of this atmosphere free design.
As the only vacuum furnace and vacuum oil quench facility in all of Australia, Alpha Detroit is uniquely equipped to be your high-end parts provider. Our heat treatment units are contaminant free, atmosphere-less, and built to process superior products. These products potentially include aircraft landing struts, structurally capable alloys, and end-cycle metals that are guaranteed to furnish uniformly toughened mechanical attributes.