Heat Treatment Solution
Heat Treatment is a method of controlled heating and cooling of metals to alter their mechanical and physical properties without changing the product shape. The technique involves the use of heating or chilling, usually to extreme temperatures, to attain a desired result, such as - hardening or softening of a metal. Some of the common techniques of heat treatment include annealing, case hardening, precipitation strengthening, tempering and quenching. As a matter of fact, the term heat treatment applies only to processes where the heating and cooling is done for the basic objective of altering the properties intentionally. Heating and cooling, however, sometimes occur as incidental phases of other manufacturing methods such as hot forming or welding.
This work falls into two main categories –
Heat Treatment Solution involves heating of Aluminum alloy to a particular temperature for sufficient time so that the alloying elements go into solid solution and forma single phase. The factors which affect the final properties of the alloy are soaking temperature, soaking time and cooling rate.
The Soaking temperature depends on various phases which are present in alloys. Each phase will dissolve in solid solution at different rates. The soaking time is based on the rate of dissolution of alloying elements into solid solution. It also depends on the conditions under which the alloy is cast. Sand cast parts have coarser structure than permanent mould casting. Hence Aluminium Sand Castings take time for dissolution of phases necessitating longer soaking time.
