This process is the rapid cooling of a work piece in water to obtain certain material properties. This is applied after high temperature soaking to produce the final desired crystal structure in the metal. Quenching can be used both for producing tough materials (e.g. austenitic stainless steel) or hard materials (e.g. alloy steels).
RCR Heat treatment, Welshpool, has a pair of large high-temperature bogie furnaces (~5.4×2.8m and ~4x3m) and associated smaller furnaces. These can be used for a wide range of heat treatments including annealing, normalising, solution annealing, and hardening by water quenching in our 6m x 3m x 2.5m quench tank.