Heat and surface treatment

Surface processing is an operation (chemical, electrochemical, physical, and mechanical) aiming to modify the chemical or physical properties of materials, so as to adapt to the conditions to which they are to be submitted. Depending on the applications, surface processing aims at improving the contact properties to prevent wearing down, hardening materials (especially for workpieces subjected to the effects of friction or rolling) softening them (to obtain a flexible surface and therefore easier to machine), reduce the coefficients of friction and adherence to optimize output mechanisms, increase the resistance to corrosion (chemical inertia), improve the conductivity of a material or even to electrically insulate it. Electroplating installation (for a surface processing by electrolytic deposition) and the passivation machine (for the application of a passive film allowing to slow corrosion) also make part of the equipment for surface processing. NittyGritty, for example, is a well-known manufacturer of passivation machines. The thermal processing is aimed to modify the structure of the material. It allows improving the mechanical properties such as hardness, ductility, etc. There are different types of machines for performing the different types of operations of thermal processing. The oven, for example, is a thermal processing device. It can operate with air at atmospheric pressure, with a vacuum or by using neutral gas. The circulation of air inside the oven can be done by natural convection or by forced convection using a fan. The oven is also used for the pre-polymerization and the polymerization of materials into thermosetting resins. Binder, Roxer, Salvis, and Voetsch are among the leading manufacturers of ovens. These machines can reach temperatures up to 300 or even 500° C. Above these temperatures they are not ovens which we are dealing with but furnaces. The furnace is also a machine operating in surface processing by controlling its temperature curve according to time. We can cite Anton Paar, Kohnle, and Solo among the leading manufacturers of machines of this type. Other machines of surface processing, the installation of quenches is intended to the hardening of the surface of a workpiece while maintaining its degrees of elongation and resilience of the core. Amysa is one of the best known in this field.