The heat treatment process generally includes three processes of heating, heat preservation and cooling, and sometimes only two processes of heating and cooling. These processes are connected to each other and cannot be interrupted. Heating is one of the important processes of heat treatment. There are many heating methods for metal heat treatment. The first use of charcoal and coal as a heat source, and the application of liquid and gaseous fuels. Electrical applications make heating easy to control and environmentally friendly. These heat sources can be used for direct heating, or by indirect heating of molten salts or metals, or floating particles. When the metal is heated, the workpiece is exposed to the air, and oxidation and decarburization (ie, the carbon content on the surface of the steel part) often occur, which has a detrimental effect on the surface properties of the parts after the heat treatment. Thus the metal should normally be heated in a controlled atmosphere or protective atmosphere, in molten salt and in a vacuum, or protected by coating or packaging methods. Heating temperature is one of the important process parameters of heat treatment process. Selecting and controlling heating temperature is the main problem to ensure the quality of heat treatment. The heating temperature varies depending on the metal material to be treated and the purpose of the heat treatment, but is generally heated above the phase transition temperature to obtain a high temperature structure. In addition, the transformation takes a certain time, so when the surface of the metal workpiece reaches the required heating temperature, it must be kept at this temperature for a certain period of time, so that the internal and external temperatures are uniform, and the microstructure is completely transformed. This period of time is called the holding time. When high-energy density heating and surface heat treatment are used, the heating rate is extremely fast, and generally there is no holding time, and the heat treatment time of the chemical heat treatment tends to be long. Cooling is also an indispensable step in the heat treatment process. The cooling method varies from process to process, mainly to control the cooling rate. Generally, the annealing rate is the slowest, the normalizing cooling rate is faster, and the quenching cooling rate is faster. However, there are different requirements depending on the type of steel. For example, an empty hard steel can be hardened by a normalizing cooling rate. Metal heat treatment processes can be roughly divided into three categories: overall heat treatment, surface heat treatment and chemical heat treatment. Depending on the heating medium, heating temperature and cooling method, each category can be divided into several different heat treatment processes. The same metal uses different heat treatment processes to obtain different microstructures and thus different properties. Steel is the most widely used metal in the industry, and the steel microstructure is also the most complex, so there are many kinds of steel heat treatment processes. The overall heat treatment is a metal heat treatment process that heats the workpiece as a whole and then cools it at an appropriate speed to change its overall mechanical properties. The overall heat treatment of steel has four basic processes: annealing, normalizing, quenching and tempering. Annealing is to heat the workpiece to the appropriate temperature, using different holding time according to the material and the workpiece size, and then slowly cooling, in order to make the internal structure of the metal reach or close to equilibrium, obtain good process performance and performance, or further quench Prepare for organization. Normalizing is to cool the workpiece to a suitable temperature and then cool it in the air. The effect of normalizing is similar to annealing, but the resulting structure is finer, which is often used to improve the cutting performance of materials, and sometimes used for some less demanding parts. As the final heat treatment. Quenching is the rapid cooling of the workpiece after heating and holding it in a quenching medium such as water, oil or other inorganic salts or organic aqueous solutions. After quenching, the steel becomes hard but becomes brittle at the same time. In order to reduce the brittleness of the steel, the quenched steel is subjected to long-term heat preservation at a suitable temperature higher than room temperature and lower than 650 ° C, and then cooled. This process is called tempering. Annealing, normalizing, quenching and tempering are the "four fires" in the overall heat treatment. Among them, the quenching and tempering are closely related, and often used together, they are indispensable. The "four fires" evolved different heat treatment processes with different heating temperatures and cooling methods. In order to obtain a certain strength and toughness, the process of combining quenching and high-temperature tempering is called quenching and tempering. After quenching some alloys to form a supersaturated solid solution, it is kept at room temperature or a slightly higher temperature for a longer period of time to increase the hardness, strength or electrical magnetic properties of the alloy. Such a heat treatment process is called aging treatment. An effective and tight combination of pressure processing deformation and heat treatment, the method of obtaining a good strength and toughness of the workpiece is called deformation heat treatment; the heat treatment in a vacuum atmosphere or vacuum is called vacuum heat treatment, which can not only make The workpiece is not oxidized, does not decarburize, keeps the surface of the workpiece smooth after treatment, improves the performance of the workpiece, and can also be subjected to chemical heat treatment by using an infiltrant. Surface heat treatment is a metal heat treatment process that only heats the surface layer of the workpiece to change its surface mechanical properties. In order to heat only the surface layer of the workpiece without excessive heat being introduced into the interior of the workpiece, the heat source used must have a high energy density, that is, to give a large amount of heat energy to the workpiece per unit area, so that the surface layer or local portion of the workpiece can be short-time or instantaneous. Reach high temperatures. The main methods of surface heat treatment include flame quenching and induction heating heat treatment, commonly used heat sources such as aerobic acetylene or oxypropane, induction current, laser and electron beam. Chemical heat treatment is a metal heat treatment process that changes the chemical composition, structure and properties of the surface of the workpiece. The difference between chemical heat treatment and surface heat treatment is that the latter changes the chemical composition of the surface layer of the workpiece. Chemical heat treatment is to heat the workpiece in a medium (gas, liquid, solid) containing carbon, nitrogen or other alloying elements for a long time, so that the surface of the workpiece penetrates into carbon, nitrogen, boron and chromium. After infiltration of the elements, other heat treatment processes such as quenching and tempering are sometimes performed. The main methods of chemical heat treatment are carburizing, nitriding and metalizing. Heat treatment is one of the important processes in the manufacturing process of mechanical parts and tooling. In general, it can guarantee and improve various properties of the workpiece, such as wear resistance and corrosion resistance. It also improves the microstructure and stress state of the blank to facilitate various cold and hot processing. For example, white cast iron can be obtained by long-term annealing treatment to obtain malleable cast iron, which improves plasticity. The gears adopt the correct heat treatment process, and the service life can be increased by several times or several times than that of the gears without heat treatment. In addition, the inexpensive carbon steel passes through. Some alloying elements have some high-performance alloy steel properties, which can replace some heat-resistant steels and stainless steels; almost all of the tooling tools need to be heat treated before they can be used.