Tempering And Stress Reliving
Stress relieving consists of heating the steel to a temperature below the critical range to relieve the stresses resulting from cold working, shearing, or gas cutting. Stress relieving does not change the material’s structure and does not significantly affect its hardness. Also a process for making material softer. However, stress relieving does not change the material properties as does annealing and normalizing. A material can be stress relieved by heating it to a specific temperature that is lower than that of annealing or normalizing and letting it cool to room temperature inside or outside of the oven. This heat treatment is typically used on parts that have been severely stressed during fabrication. The stress relieving temperature is normally between 550 and 650°c for steel parts. The temperature for stress relieving copper parts is, depending on the alloy, 150-275°c and for brass components 250-500°c.