Quenching

Quenching is a step of heat treatment of metals, in particular steel. In this case, the previously heated to hardening temperature steel in water, oil, or by blowing air suddenly cooled so that a particular crystal structure ( martensite) is formed which makes the steel hard, but also brittle. Depending on the composition of the steel are different, the process parameters such as temperature, duration of the treatment and quenching.

Conversely behaves copper: it has become hard and brittle by cold deformation, it can be by recovery annealing followed by quenching again get tough and at the same time free of scale.

• Metal processing
• Change material properties