Manufacturing and Production

Heat Treatment of Steels and Alloys

Heat treatment changes properties without changing shape or composition, which makes it powerful and makes a mistake invisible until a component fails in service. This course builds the understanding to avoid that. Delegates work through the iron carbon diagram and the transformations behind every treatment, then through the effect of cooling rate through the continuous cooling transformation curves. Annealing, normalising, hardening and tempering are covered with what each achieves and the microstructure each produces. Quenching media and severity are addressed, along with distortion and quench cracking and how section thickness drives both. Hardenability is covered, including the Jominy test and why a large section cannot be through hardened. Surface treatments follow: case hardening, carburising, nitriding and induction hardening. Non ferrous treatments including solution treatment and ageing are addressed. Furnace atmosphere, decarburisation and control are covered. The course closes on hardness testing, on verifying a treatment and on specification interpretation.