2090 – 13 – Combination of Heat Treatment Steps
There’s nothing wrong with performing more than one heat treatment on your metal. When you buy treated steel, you buy it based on how it’s been heat-treated and the hardness that the heat treatments have created.
A metal might go through many different processes, like keeping it at a high temperature and then slowly cooling it. Once the part is cold worked, manufacturers may use an annealing process to increase the metal’s ductility and allow for more cold working. Once the part has been shaped, a recovery anneal can improve toughness and achieve a manufacturer’s desired hardness.
Two heat treatments are required to create martensite. First, the metal is raised to a temperature above the austenite transformation temperature, which alters its crystal structure. After that, it gets quenched to create martensite. Then, the martensite is tempered to get better toughness and reduce its brittleness. After all these processes, martensite will have the properties that shops prefer.