Introduction to Cast Iron Heat Treatment

This article introduces the general principles and applications of heat treatment to iron castings. It provides a detailed discussion on the heat treatment processes, namely, stress relieving, annealing, normalizing, throughhardening, and surface hardening for various types of cast irons. These include gray iron, ductile iron, compacted graphite iron, white iron, malleable iron, and high-alloy iron. The article describes how to control temperature and atmosphere during the heat treatment of the iron castings.