Six advantages of vacuum heat treatment

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The vacuum state is a good protective environment. The surface of mechanical parts after heat treatment in a vacuum environment is smooth and bright, the internal structure has changed, and the mechanical properties are good. In addition, there are the following advantages.

(1) Vacuum heat treatment saves energy and is economical.
Compared with normal pressure heat treatment, vacuum heat treatment can save energy because the vacuum heat treatment furnace has good insulation effect, less heat loss, and reduced energy consumption. Many vacuum heat treatment equipment can be used for a variety of vacuum heat treatments, such as vacuum annealing, vacuum quenching, vacuum carburizing, vacuum brazing, vacuum aging, etc. Vacuum heat treatment furnaces can be mechanized and automated, saving manpower and time, thereby reducing product costs.

(2) Vacuum heat treatment can achieve environmental protection.
Compared with normal pressure heat treatment, vacuum heat treatment is carried out in a closed environment, the environment is clean, waste emissions and environmental pollution are less, the shell of the vacuum heat treatment furnace is water-cooled, there is no heat impact, safe and reliable.

(3) Vacuum heat treatment is simple to operate and improves production efficiency.
Compared with normal pressure heat treatment, vacuum heat treatment has simpler operating requirements for workers, is less prone to errors, and is easy to ensure quality. Mechanical parts after vacuum heat treatment can be directly used for electroplating without degreasing, cleaning or other surface processing, eliminating many auxiliary processing steps, saving processing time and processing costs, and reducing production costs.

(4) Mechanical parts after vacuum heat treatment have good quality.
Vacuum heat treatment improves mechanical properties and can extend the service life of mechanical parts. Vacuum quenching can quench any material that is quenched by oil or gas to the highest hardness; vacuum heat treatment of high-speed steel instead of salt bath can achieve very good results, such as increasing tool life, and the tool will not have problems such as carburization, decarburization, oxidation, hydrogen embrittlement, etc.; Mechanical parts after vacuum heat treatment have small deformation and are not easy to crack. For example, high-speed steel dovetail milling cutters are vacuum heated and then vacuum quenched without cracking. The parts are vacuum oil quenched, and the deformation is only 1/10 of that of general oil quenching. After vacuum heat treatment, no processing or only a small amount of grinding is required. The service life of the mold can be extended by 40% to 400%, and the service life of the tool can be increased by 2 to 3 times.

(5) The deformation of parts after vacuum heat treatment is small.
The reasons for the deformation of the workpiece during the heat treatment process are: first, the workpiece generates phase change stress during the heat treatment process; second, the workpiece causes thermal stress due to the different temperature change rates of different parts during the heating and cooling process. The temperature in the vacuum heat treatment furnace is uniform, and the heating is carried out under vacuum conditions. The heat exchange method is mainly heat radiation, not convection heating. Therefore, the heating temperature is uniform, and the temperature difference is only ±5°C at 1200°C; the vacuum heat treatment furnace has a high degree of automation, the temperature in the furnace is easy to control, the temperature distribution in the furnace is uniform, and the temperature difference between the inside and outside of the workpiece is small, so the deformation of the workpiece is small.

(6) It is easy to realize equipment automation.
Improve the degree of equipment automation and ensure good repeatability of the quality of workpiece heat treatment. Since the working parameters required for the vacuum heat treatment process (such as temperature, pressure, flow, time, logical sequence, etc.) can be received and transmitted by modern sensors, all quantitative process routes and execution programs can be pre-programmed. The vacuum heat treatment furnaces currently designed almost all use computer program control, adjustment, and display technology, which realizes the automation of the operation of vacuum heat treatment equipment, the correct execution of the process, the good repeatability of equipment operation, and the flexibility of human-computer dialogue and real-time monitoring, thus ensuring the uniformity of the quality of the heat treatment products.

Vacuum Gas Quenching Furnace