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Manufacturing: Surface Finishing
Heat
Treatment - Quenching
Quenching is the
process for making material harder. This
method has been known for hundreds of years
but was only perfected in the last century.
The metal is heated to a specific temperature
and rapidly cooled (quenched) in a bath
of water, brine, oil, or air to increase
its hardness.
One drawback of using this method by itself
is that the metal becomes brittle. This
treatment is therefore typically followed
by a tempering
process which is a heating process
at another lower specific temperature to
stress relieve the material and minimize
the brittleness problem. The temperature
chosen for the tempering process directly
impacts the hardness of the work piece .
The higher the temperature in the tempering
process, the lower the hardness.
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