The terms “heat treating” and “annealing” are often used interchangeably. While it makes sense that they’re confused for one another, heat treating and annealing in Gastonia, NC are not the same thing. We’ve put together this post in hopes of clearing a few things up and to set the record straight regarding the two terms. Continue reading to learn more about annealing and a variety of different metal treatment procedures.
Annealing is a form of heat treatment that’s meant to soften the metal with the goal of increasing its ductility while reducing its brittleness. During the process, the metal is superheated in an atmosphere-controlled furnace for anywhere from several hours to several days. Once it has reached the desired temperature, the metal is removed and then slowly cooled. The degree to which we heat the metal varies from metal to metal, and also depends on the goal of the procedure.
Other types of metal treatment
Annealing in Gastonia, NC isn’t all we do. At J. F. Heat Treating Inc., we perform a wide variety of metal treatment processes that are all designed to enhance your metal products and parts. Here are some of the other common procedures we perform:
- Quenching: During quenching, metal is rapidly cooled in water, oil or cold air. Quickly cooling the metal like this creates a dramatically harder or softer metal, depending on what you’re looking for. You can rest easy knowing that we’ll perform the right technique to make your metal either much softer or much harder as needed.
- Tempering: Most un-tempered steel doesn’t provide enough flexibility to make itself useful. Luckily, we’re here to fix that. We carefully temper steel and other metals to ensure they’re flexible enough to work with while retaining their hardness.
- Peening: Shot blasting or mechanically hammering metal is called peening, and it reworks the metal’s surface to improve its properties. Peening relieves stress and boosts its strength.
- Normalizing: Generally speaking, metals don’t have uniform graining throughout the piece. The good news is that we can fix it! By heating the metal above its upper critical point and then allowing it to cool in the air, the grain structure becomes normalized, creating a stronger and more reliable steel.
- Hardening: For a stronger, harder metal, be sure to come to our team! We offer both flame and induction hardening to work on as much or as little of your metal as you desire.
- Cleaning: Traditional sandblasting gets the job done if you want a clean and durable metal, but don’t go that route if you want a job well done. Instead, come to us—we offer wheelabrating cleaning services for a superior clean.
- Aging: Using solutions to age your metals increases their strength by changing the metal’s microstructure. Our aging process allows this to happen quickly, so you can move on to the next step of your project.
Whatever you need to be done to your metal, be sure to hire J. F. Heat Treating Inc. to do it! We’re pleased to be your go-to choice for heat treating in Gastonia, NC and a variety of other metal services. Pick up the phone and call us today to learn how we can help you and your business.