Quench and temper Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Quench and temper - Lab Report Example The first step in a quench and temper process is the intense heating that that aims at ensuring homogeneity of the steel’s elements and requires a temperature that is above the component’s transformation potential. This therefore eliminates possible asymmetries that reduce strength of normal steel. The sudden cooling then yields a â€Å"body centered ‘martensite’, which is hard† but is brittle (Black and Kohser, 2011, p. 133). The temper process however, defines a reheating of the material, at moderate temperatures to reduce the brittleness towards more malleable material (Black and Kohser, 2011, p. 133). The achieved strength of the material however depends on a number of factors. One of the factors that determine the achieved strength, and toughness, of a material from a quench and temper process is the level of orientation of microelements of the materials. Quenching and tempering process alignS the microelements to a level of homogeneity, a process that is done at the tempering process. Homogeneity can however only be achieved if the material is heat to a higher temperature, above the transformation level of each element of the material. A lower temperature exposure, relative to the elements’ transformation temperature is therefore expected to have little impacts on the achieved level of toughness and strength of a material while a high temperature heating is likely to achieve an increased level of toughness and strength. This factor directly relates to the nature of treatment (Shah, 2007, p. 58). The nature of treatment that a material is subjected to also plays a role in the acquired strength. Inappropriate processes are for instance identified with lower gained strength and hardness. In some cases however, poor treatment conditions even worsen a material’s strength and hardness to make it weaker than its original condition. Other factors that affect the effects of