Steel Tempering Oven, Color : Gray

Tempering ovens are used to achieve higher toughness in an alloy to prevent catastrophic failure by allowing for deformation instead of fracturing. The object of tempering is to reduce the brittleness in hardened steel and to remove the internal strains caused by the sudden cooling of a quenching bath. Tempering is also used to reduce and manage the steel’s hardness, strength, and toughness, while at the same time decreasing brittleness in fully hardened steel. Tempering is performed in an oven after quench hardening by heating the metal to a temperature below its critical point followed by cooling. The tempering temperature, soak time, as well as composition of the steel, determine the amount of hardness removed. Tempering requires precise time and temperature control during the entire process in order to reach the desired physical properties for the final product. Typically, high strength materials are not ductile – and vice versa – but it is part of a complex relationship between a metal’s ductility and its strength, with high toughness values requiring a delicate intersection of the two. Typically, high strength materials are not ductile – and vice versa – heat treating certain materials in a tempering oven can unlock beneficial values on both axes of this mechanical dynamic.