Annealing Process

Annealing is a heat process whereby a metal is heated to a specific temperature /colour and then allowed to cool slowly. This softens the metal which means it can be cut and shaped more easily. Mild steel, is heated to a red heat and allowed to cool slowly. However, metals such as aluminium will melt if heated for too long. Aluminium can be annealed but care must be taken whilst heating. The flame should be held at a distance to the aluminium so that it gives a generalized heating to the metal. A trick of the trade is to rub soap on to the surface of the aluminium and then heat it on the brazing hearth. It takes only a short time for the soap to turn black. The brazing torch should be turned off immediately and the aluminium allowed being cool slowly. It is now annealed and should be very soft and malleable.

Physical Properties of Annealed Metals Annealed metals are relatively soft and can be cut and shaped more easily. They bend easily when pressure is applied. As a rule they are heated and allowed to cool slowly.

The image above shows that an annealed metal is usually softer and can be deformed more easily than metals that are not annealed.

Physical Properties of Hardened Metals Hardened metals are difficult to cut and shape. They are very difficult if not impossible to bend. As a rule they are heated and cooled very quickly by quenching in clean, cold water.

The image above shows that metals that have not been annealed are very difficult to deform.

Stages of Annealing
There are three stages in the annealing process, with the first being the recovery phase, which results in softening of the metal through removal of crystal defects (the primary type of which is the linear defect called a dislocation) and the internal stresses which they cause. Recovery phase covers all annealing phenomena that occur before the appearance of new strain-free grains. The second phase is recrystallization, where new strain-free grains nucleate and grow to replace those deformed by internal stresses. If annealing is allowed to continue once recrystallization has been completed, grain growth will occur, in which the microstructure starts to coarsen and may cause the metal to have less than satisfactory mechanical properties.

Annealing in a controlled atmosphere

The high temperature of annealing may result in oxidation of the metals surface, resulting in scale. If scale is to be avoided, annealing is carried out in an oxygen-, carbon-, and nitrogenfree atmosphere (to avoid oxidation, carburization, and nitriding respectively) such as endothermic gas (a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen gas, and nitrogen.

The magnetic properties of mu-metal (Espey cores) are introduced by annealing the alloy in a hydrogen atmosphere.

Setup and equipment

Typically, large ovens are used for the annealing process. The inside of the oven is large enough to place the workpiece in a position to receive maximum exposure to the circulating heated air. For high volume process annealing, gas fired conveyor furnaces are often used. For large workpieces or high quantity parts Car-bottom furnaces will be used in order to move the parts in and out with ease. Once the annealing process has been successfully completed, the workpieces are sometimes left in the oven in order for the parts to have a controlled cooling process. While some workpieces are left in the oven to cool in a controlled fashion, other materials and alloys are removed from the oven. After being removed from the oven, the workpieces are often quickly cooled off in a process known as quench hardening. Some typical methods of quench hardening materials involve the use of media such as air, water, oil, or salt.

Diffusion annealing of semiconductors

In the semiconductor industry, silicon wafers are annealed, so that dopant atoms, usually boron, phosphorus or arsenic, can diffuse into substitutional positions in the crystal lattice, resulting in drastic changes in the electrical properties of the semiconducting material.

Specialized annealing cycles

Normalization Normalization is an annealing process in which a metal is cooled in air after heating in order to relieve stress. This process is typically confined to hardenable steel. It is used to refine grains which have been deformed through cold work, and can improve ductility and toughness of the steel. It involves heating the steel to just above its upper critical point. It is soaked for a short period then allowed to cool in air. Small grains are formed which give a much harder and tougher metal with normal tensile strength and not the maximum ductility achieved by annealing. It eliminates columnar grains and dendritic segregation that sometimes occurs during casting. Normalizing improves machinability of a component and provides dimensional stability if subjected to further heat treatment processes.

Process annealing
Process annealing, also called "intermediate annealing", "subcritical annealing", or "inprocess annealing", is a heat treatment cycle that restores some of the ductility to a work

piece allowing it be worked further without breaking. Ductility is important in shaping and creating a more refined piece of work through processes such as rolling, drawing, forging, spinning, extruding and heading. The piece is heated to a temperature typically below the austenizing temperature, and held there long enough to relieve stresses in the metal. The piece is finally cooled slowly to room temperature. It is then ready again for additional cold working. This can also be used to ensure there is reduced risk of distortion of the work piece during machining, welding, or further heat treatment cycles. The temperature range for process annealing ranges from 500 F to 1400 F, depending on the alloy in question.

Full anneal

A full anneal typically results in the second most ductile state a metal can assume for metal alloy. It creates an entirely new homogeneous and uniform structure with good dynamic properties. To perform a full anneal, a metal is heated to its annealing point (about 50C above the austenic temperature as graph shows) and held for sufficient time to allow the material to fully austenitize, to form austenite or austenite-cementite grain structure. The material is then allowed to cool slowly so that the equilibrium microstructure is obtained. In some cases this means the material is allowed to air cool. In other cases the material is allowed to furnace cool. The details of the process depend on the type of metal and the precise alloy involved. In any case the result is a more ductile material that has greater stretch ratio and reduction of area properties but a lower yield strength and a lower tensile strength. This process is also called LP annealing for lamellar pearlite in the steel industry as opposed to a process anneal which does not specify a microstructure and only has the goal of softening the material. Often material that is to be machined, will be annealed, then be followed by further heat treatment to obtain the final desired properties.

Short cycle anneal

Short cycle annealing is used for turning normal ferrite into malleable ferrite. It consists of heating, cooling, and then heating again from 4 to 8 hours.

Conclusion

Annealing is the process of heating up a metal to a particular temperature and then cooled down. This softens the metal which means it can be cut and shaped more easily. Mild steel, is heated to a red heat and allowed to cool slowly. However, metals such as aluminium will melt if heated for too long.