A second heat treatment effector exists in an industrial furnace, one that’s sometimes forgotten by the average layperson. Besides the heat source, the gas-fuelled or electrically energized thermal energy flowing evenly around a subject workpiece, there’s the atmosphere inside that sealed chamber to consider. Sometimes, the atmosphere is totally taken […]
As a rule, the inner workings of a vacuum furnace are ordinarily composed of a series of sealed firebox chambers. At the centre of this airtight assemblage, a leakproof furnace shell is hooked to an air purging pump. Heat-inducing elements, perhaps made out of fitted graphite or ceramic, provide all […]
Metals harden when they’re heated, or they become more ductile when they’re heated then cooled at a specific rate. Interestingly enough, metal workpieces change in other ways when cooking in a furnace. With their grains realigning as the thermal energy sends the material into a state of atomic flux, the […]
Red Hardness, the terminology paints quite a picture. After a steel workpiece slides into a furnace, it soaks up so much thermal that it becomes “red hot.” Alloy microstructures alter when they reach this point. The steel hardens. More importantly, the metal retains this hardness quotient after it cools. That’s […]
Once upon a time, blacksmiths heat-treated swords and armour. The job came to an end as the object sizzled in a barrel of water. That action toughened the metal. Just like that, there was no brittleness to worry about during the heat of battle. Modern heat treatment processes have similar […]