Heat Treat Society Online Member Community

There are lot of very cool physical phenomena, processes, and components encountered in the field of thermal processing. What's the coolest thing you've seen?

To start, I'll throw out a couple of my own:

1) Press "stretch": The (sometimes quite significant) elastic deformation of forging presses that occurs under load. In some cases, engineers have to compensate for this phenomena in the design of tooling.
2) Induction levitation melting: Simultaneously levitating and melting materials using electromagnetic induction. It's so cool (figuratively, not literally), it looks like magic!

Now that the ball is rolling, please share your own experiences!

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Collin Russell
Research & Development Engineer
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos NM
(505) 664-0949
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I have seen lots of cool things over many years, but here are a few:

1) Residual Stress from heat treating- nobody likes to talk about these failures because of embarrassment and other considerations. 
      (a) A 45 foot long seamless steel tube that sounded like a cannon being fired when it cracked full length after quenching that occurred because a higher carbon tube was erroneously heat treated by quench and temper instead of normalizing.
      (b) A 2 inch diameter induction hardened steel axle that sounded like a bell when it cracked across the diameter for over 12 inches due to a combination of tensile residual stress from induction hardening and a flaw at the centerline. 
      (c) 6 inch thick low alloy steel slabs that cracked violently (flew several feet) while stacked in a slab yard - caused by residual stresses from conditioning the surface with an acetylene  torch at a temperature too low to prevent the formation of martensite on the surface.

2) An induction hardened truck axle that can be elastically twisted up to 90 degrees - think about what this means during service in a truck.

Robert Cryderman FASM
Research Associate Professor
Colorado School of Mines
Golden, Colorado
rcryderm@mines.edu

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Robert Cryderman FASM
Research Associate Professor
Colorado School Of Mines
[Golden] [Colorado]
(734) 735-3093
ErieErie
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-01-2021 16:31
From: Collin Russell
Subject: JUST FOR FUN: What is the coolest thing you've encountered in thermal processing?

There are lot of very cool physical phenomena, processes, and components encountered in the field of thermal processing. What's the coolest thing you've seen?

To start, I'll throw out a couple of my own:

1) Press "stretch": The (sometimes quite significant) elastic deformation of forging presses that occurs under load. In some cases, engineers have to compensate for this phenomena in the design of tooling.
2) Induction levitation melting: Simultaneously levitating and melting materials using electromagnetic induction. It's so cool (figuratively, not literally), it looks like magic!

Now that the ball is rolling, please share your own experiences!

------------------------------
Collin Russell
Research & Development Engineer
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos NM
(505) 664-0949
------------------------------

I'm always thrilled whenever I can take a tour of a client's facility and see heat treat shop in action... it's fascinating to see how the process works. Once in a while I'll get sucked down the rabbit hole of watching videos on YoutTube too. There's so much great content out there.

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Josh Hale
Managing Recruiter
International Search Partners
(619) 828-1040
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Original Message:
Sent: 09-01-2021 16:31
From: Collin Russell
Subject: JUST FOR FUN: What is the coolest thing you've encountered in thermal processing?

There are lot of very cool physical phenomena, processes, and components encountered in the field of thermal processing. What's the coolest thing you've seen?

To start, I'll throw out a couple of my own:

1) Press "stretch": The (sometimes quite significant) elastic deformation of forging presses that occurs under load. In some cases, engineers have to compensate for this phenomena in the design of tooling.
2) Induction levitation melting: Simultaneously levitating and melting materials using electromagnetic induction. It's so cool (figuratively, not literally), it looks like magic!

Now that the ball is rolling, please share your own experiences!

------------------------------
Collin Russell
Research & Development Engineer
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos NM
(505) 664-0949
------------------------------