Supplier's Category: All Heat Treatment & Metallurgical Processing: Annealing, quenching, and tempering to alter material properties
Heat treatment and metallurgical processing alters a metal’s mechanical properties through controlled heating and cooling — annealing to soften, quenching to harden, tempering to balance the two. It’s typically a secondary process applied after a part is machined, cast, or formed to its near-final shape.
Heat treatment almost always happens after primary shaping and, for tight-tolerance parts, is followed by a finish-machining or grinding pass to correct the dimensional movement heat treatment can cause.
- After machining or forming: hardening and stress relief before final finishing
- After welding: stress relief to reduce distortion and residual stress
- Before surface treatment: base hardness set before plating or coating
Related terms: annealing, quenching, tempering, case hardening, carburizing, nitriding, stress relieving, solution heat treatment, aging (precipitation hardening), hardness testing (Rockwell, Vickers)
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What to confirm with a heat treat supplier
Heat treatment is invisible in the finished part until it fails, so process documentation matters more than most other manufacturing steps.
Questions to ask
- Do they provide certified time-temperature records for each batch, traceable to your parts
- What hardness testing do they perform, and is it included or billed separately
- Can they hold the distortion within your post-treatment tolerance, or will parts need re-machining