About Heat Treatment

For centuries, manufacturers have utilized heat treatments to modify certain properties of metals. For example, some heat treated steels demonstrate enhanced strength and hardness. The use of specific heat treatments frequently assists a manufacturer in creating more durable items. Both heating and cooling contribute significantly to this manufacturing process.

Why Manufacturers Use Heat Treatments

Today manufacturers employ heat treatment operations to modify physical or chemical properties of metals. These operations ultimately help improve quality. For example, some popular reasons to apply a heat treatment include enhancing strength and creating a more homogenous internal structure.

While many processes, such as casting, result in metal heating or cooling, the temperature changes which occur during a heat treatment transpire on purpose. They do not arise as an incidental result of manufacturing. Consequently, a heat treatment constitutes a value-added operation. Bunty LLC’s heat treatment services assist customers in producing quality components.

Popular Heat Treatment Methods

Bunty LLC offers competitively priced in-demand heat treatments. These operations have gained widespread acceptance. Customers rely upon us for annealing, quenching, induction hardening, and nitriding expertise. We also offer a number of additional specialized heat treatment operations. 

Annealing

• Process: Annealing involves re-heating metal and cooling it within controlled temperature parameters.
• Frequent Uses: Many products eventually utilized in the construction industry undergo annealing. Annealing today plays an important role in preparing welded mechanical assemblies for finishing.
• Benefits: This operation helps reduce brittleness. It may also assist manufacturers seeking to perform further cold-working or machining. Annealed metal enables manufacturers to manipulate and work with it more easily.

Quenching

• Process: A manufacturer cools heated workpieces rapidly to produce changes in hardness. It causes some metals to become softer, while most ferrous alloys grow harder.
• Frequent Uses: A variety of manufacturing sectors use this operation. They include businesses making consumer wares, tools, and small engine components.
• Benefits: This operation frequently helps harden or soften parts cost-effectively. It modifies the hardness of diversely sized and shaped components.

Induction Hardening

• Process: This hardening process subjects a metal workpiece placed within an electrified metal coil to high temperatures, followed by quenching. It typically occurs today with automated production environments.
• Frequent Uses: Many uses exist for this technology. It hardens gears and pinions, for example. It also hardens medical devices and components.
• Benefits: Induction hardening produces very few toxic byproducts. Hardening does not necessarily require direct contact between the component and other materials. Manufacturers harden parts of variable sizes using this technology today. It lends itself to automation.

Nitriding

• Process: This case hardening process involves subjecting a metal workpiece to thermochemical changes caused by the formation of a nitride-rich layer on the metal surface. Nitrogen atoms (typically obtained from ammonia) diffuse over the heated surface of a ferrous alloy.
• Frequent Uses: As a low-cost case hardening technology, nitriding frequently helps harden the surfaces of tools. It will produce many tough metal parts, including the wires used in steel fencing.
• Benefits: Nitriding helps manufacturers produce more durable, wear-resistant metal parts. As a form of case hardening, it enhances the hardness (and brittleness) of the metal surface, improving its ability to withstand scratches, abrasions, and other insults.

Additional Heat Treatment Operations Offered by Bunty LLC

• Normalizing – During this operation, a specialized type of annealing, a manufacturer seeks to produce a more homogenous, uniform internal grain structure within a ferrous alloy. Heated workpieces cool in air.
• Stress Relieving – Another type of annealing operation, stress relieving, involves heating a ferrous alloy to a point below its lowest critical temperature. The manufacturer then carefully ensures the material cools at a uniform speed.
• Tempering – Typically performed after quenching to prevent problems associated with brittleness, tempering requires a manufacturer to re-heat a metal component to a high temperature below its melting point before allowing the material to cool down gradually.
• Case Hardening – This operation permits the creation of a hard exterior shell surrounding a metal part. Typically, the manufacturer exposes the heated surface to carburizing or nitriding gas.
• Carburizing – A form of case hardening, carburizing produces thermochemical changes on the exterior of a low carbon steel or iron part to enhance surface wear resistance.
• Plasma Nitriding – This nitriding operation, a type of case hardening, occurs with the assistance of nitrogen gas ions bombarding the surface of a metal component, frequently during welding operations.
• Ionic Nitriding – Manufacturers also perform case hardening by utilizing a temperature controlled vacuum chamber and electricity to produce nitrogen ions; they diffuse across the surface of a charged metal workpiece.
• Gas Nitriding – This form of nitriding has enabled manufacturers to utilize low-cost technologies to perform case hardening in industrial settings for many years. They expose heated metal surfaces to gaseous ammonia to help create a tough nitride-rich exterior on treated components.

Why Customers Select Our Heat Treatment Services

Bunty LLC in Greenville, South Carolina offers customers a variety of in-demand heat treatment services. We possess the capabilities required to perform these operations dependably to generate high volumes of uniform metal parts satisfying tight tolerance ranges. Our firm strives to assist customers in producing competitively priced, highly cost-effective components for the commercial marketplace.

We’ve recruited a well-trained staff of experts to help us furnish superb customer service and support. Rely on our talented team of engineers and technicians. We’ll help supply heat treatment services for your enterprise and furnish consultation and ancillary services.

CONTACT BUNTY LLC

For further information about our services, contact us via the convenient website form or submit a request for quote directly.

We welcome your inquiries.