Question - What Is Heat Treatment And Why Is It Done?
Answer -
Heat treatment can be defined as a combination of processes or operations in which the heating and cooling of a metal or alloy is done in order to obtain desirable characteristics without changing the compositions.
Some of the motives or purpose of heat treatment are as follows:-
- In order to improve the hardness of metals.
- For the softening of the metal.
- In order to improve the machinability of the metal.
- To change the grain size.
- To provide better resistance to heat, corrosion, wear etc.
Heat treatment is generally performed in the following ways:
- Normalizing
- Annealing
- Spheroidising
- Hardening
- Tempering
- Surface or case hardening