Metal Heat Treatment

You know you can Google this real quick.

But just to kick you along. Heat treating is a 2 step process. Assuming the base metal is hardenable, the first step is to heat it to it's critical temperature. Then quench it in it's intended media to cool it, which freezes it in it's hardest state it will ever be in. This state is typically too hard and the part can shatter from any bending stress. So second step is to temper it to the desired end hardness by heating it to a temperature that will unfreeze some of the atoms from the hardest state. This will keep it hard, and tough. This is sometimes called drawing it down or back.

I'm keeping this generic as Iron is one material, but other metals are heat treatable. I only know about iron from my hobby.

You can also surface harden by coating the part with a correct substance, and bringing it up to critical temperature, then quenching, and tempering.

ignator

Try this.

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