Heat Treating Steel
What is heat treating?
The methods of heat treating steel include a group of industrial and metalworking processes used to alter the physical, and sometimes chemical, properties of a material. The most common application is metallurgical. Heat treatments are also used in the manufacture of many other materials, such as glass. Heat treatment involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to extreme temperatures, to achieve a desired result such as hardening or softening of a material.
Heat treatment techniques include annealing, case hardening, precipitation strengthening, tempering and quenching. It is noteworthy that while the term heat treatment applies only to processes where the heating and cooling are done for the specific purpose of altering properties intentionally, heating and cooling often occur incidentally during other manufacturing processes such as hot forming or welding.
Stress Relieving & Annealing at PGI Steel
At PGI Steel, we stress relieve and anneal steel parts and fabrications every day of the work week. Heating processes such as annealing and stress relieving remove the inherent stress properties in steel, improve the machine-ability, and allows us to grind parts to higher flatness standards.
Furnace temperatures reach up to 1,600 degrees during the annealing process. The soak time is determined by the type of material and by the thickness of the annealed parts.
We recommend annealing all 1045 & 4140 flame cut parts.
Heat charts are available upon request.
Work pieces manufactured from 1045 plate and 4140 plate are typical examples of steel parts that require metal annealing. The car bottom furnace has a capacity of 8 ft. x 8 ft. x 14 ft., and our overhead cranes can handle work pieces up to 40,000 lbs. We can also quote special heat cycles to meet individual requirements.