This article focuses on various vacuum heat treating processes for additively manufactured parts, namely annealing and stress relieving, solid-solution annealing, and solution treating and aging. It addresses several practical concerns involved in using vacuum heat treatment, including temperature measurement, unvented cavities, loose powder, and direct contact of metals in the high-temperature vacuum. The article provides a short discussion on sintering and evaporation of metals in vacuum furnaces.

This datasheet provides information on key alloy metallurgy, mill product specifications, processing effects on physical and mechanical properties, and applications of high-strength aerospace alloys 2024 and Alclad 2024. It contains tables that list values of tensile property limits for 2024 sheet, plate, and round product forms. Figures illustrate the effect of stretching and aging on toughness of the 2024 sheet and the effect of temperature on tensile properties of 1.0 mm thick Alclad 2024-T3 sheet.

Alloys 242.0 and A242.0 are age-hardenable casting alloys with excellent strength at elevated temperatures. This datasheet provides information on key alloy metallurgy, processing effects on physical and mechanical properties, fabrication characteristics, and application characteristics of these 2xxx series alloys.

Alloy 710.0 is a natural-aging aluminum alloy produced by sand casting and suitable for highly stressed castings. This datasheet provides information on key alloy metallurgy, processing effects on physical and mechanical properties, and fabrication characteristics of this 7xxx series alloy.

This datasheet provides information on key alloy metallurgy, processing effects on physical and mechanical properties, and applications of natural aging casting alloys 711.0 and 712.0. The fatigue strength of smooth and notched permanent mold aluminum casting of C712.0-F is illustrated.

Alloy 296.0 is an aluminum permanent-mold casting alloy with higher silicon than 295.0, which reduces shrinkage and improves fluidity. This datasheet provides information on key alloy metallurgy, fabrication characteristics, processing effects on physical and mechanical properties, and application characteristics of this series alloy. Room-temperature aging characteristics for aluminum alloy 296.0-T4 and 296.0-T6 are also illustrated.

Alloys 333.0 and A333.0 are age-hardenable permanent mold casting alloys recommended for high-temperature applications requiring pressure tightness. This datasheet provides information on key alloy metallurgy, processing effects on physical and mechanical properties, fabrication characteristics, and application characteristics of these 3xxx series alloys.

Wrought heat treatable 7xxx alloys are more responsive to precipitation hardening than the 2xxx series alloys and can achieve higher strength levels, approaching tensile strengths of 690 MPa (100 ksi). This article provides an overview of key metallurgy, properties, and applications of the 7xxx aluminum alloy. It also illustrates the natural aging characteristics of 7050 aluminum sheet alloys at room temperature and relationships among commonly used alloys in the 7xxx series.

This datasheet provides information on key alloy metallurgy, processing effects on physical and mechanical properties, and applications characteristics of Al-Si-Mg high-strength casting alloys 356.0 and A356.0. Figures illustrate the variation of Charpy impact energy in A356-T6 castings as a function of solution time; and room-temperature aging characteristics for aluminum alloy 356.0-T4. Growth and hardness curves for aluminum alloy 356.0-T4 are also presented.

This article summarizes a typical solution and aging heat treatments of 2xxx (Al-Cu), 6xxx (Al-Mg-Si), and 7xxx (Al-Zn-Mg) wrought alloys. It discusses the general aging characteristics and the effects of reheating of aluminum alloys. Typical examples of hardness and conductivity values for various aluminum alloy tempers are listed in a table. The article also describes the age hardening of Al-Cu (Mg) alloys, Al-Mg-Si alloys, and Zn-Mg-(Cu) aluminum alloys.

Heat treatment of aluminum alloys frequently refers to the heat treatable aluminum alloys that can be strengthened by solution treatment, quenching, and subsequent hardening. This article introduces the general metallurgy of strengthening aluminum alloys by heat treatment. It discusses various heat treatable alloying elements, such as copper, chromium, iron, magnesium, silicon, zinc, and lithium. The article describes the age-hardening treatments and generalized precipitation sequence for aluminum alloys. It reviews the solution heat treatment in terms of solution heating time and temperature, as well as high-temperature oxidation. The article also discusses quench sensitivity, vacancy loss, grain-boundary precipitates, and quench delay for the heat treatment of aluminum. It concludes with a discussion on the deformation of aluminum alloys prior to aging.

The strength of aluminum castings can be improved significantly by heat treatments, which control the size, shape, and distribution of the impurity elements in the casting. This article presents a discussion on the heat treatment of aluminum alloy castings, with a focus on the fundamental technical aspects involved in each process step. The intent is to convey a good understanding of the fundamental aspects of heat treatment. Typical heat treatments of aluminum casting alloys are presented in a table. The article describes the solution heat treatment, quenching, and preaging of Al-Si-Mg alloys, as well as the solution heat treatment and artificial aging of Al-Si-Cu-Mg casting alloys.

This article begins by describing the designations of cast and wrought aluminum alloys. It explains the effects of main alloying elements in aluminum alloys: boron, chromium, copper, iron, lithium, magnesium, manganese, nickel, phosphorus, silicon, sodium, strontium, titanium, and zinc. The article describes the microstructure of cast and wrought aluminum alloys and the various strengthening mechanisms, including solid solution, grain refinement, strain or work hardening, precipitation (or age) hardening, and dispersoid strengthening. The article explicates the tribological behavior of aluminum alloys, aluminum-base composites, and metal-matrix composites. It presents the effect of material-related parameters and external factors on wear behavior and transitions of aluminum-silicon alloys. The article also presents the most important factors affecting the dry sliding wear behavior of particle-reinforced aluminum-base composites against a steel counterface.

Retrogression and reaging (RRA) is an established form of postquench aging heat treatment. RRA treatments can be applied to precipitation-hardened aluminum alloys that are used in aerospace applications. This article provides information on the development background of RRA and the steps involved in the RRA treatments. It discusses the process descriptions, applications, microstructural consequences, and limitations of RRA. In addition, the article describes the influence of RRA on mechanical properties.

This article provides a detailed discussion on the heat treatment processes for titanium and titanium alloys. These processes are age hardening, solution treatment, aging, and annealing. The article illustrates the characteristics of equilibrium phase diagrams that are important for understanding the heat treatment of titanium alloys. It explains the types of metastable phases encountered in titanium alloys. The article also provides information on the equilibrium phase relationships and properties of titanium alloys.

This article presents a detailed discussion on typical thermal treatment practices for hardening of various aluminum casting alloys. These practices are solution treatment, quenching or cooling, preaging, and artificial aging at an elevated temperature. The aluminum casting alloys considered here are: Al-Cu and Al-Cu-Mg (2xx) alloys, Al-Zn-Mg (7xx) alloys, Al-Si-Mg alloys, Al-Si-Cu, and Al-Si-Cu-Mg alloys.

This article describes the effects of alloying and heat treatment on the metastable transition precipitates that occur in age hardenable aluminum alloys. Early precipitation stages are less well understood than later ones. This article details the aging sequence and characteristics of precipitates that occur in the natural aging and artificial aging of Al-Mg-Si-(Cu) alloys, Al-Mg-Cu alloys, microalloyed Al-Mg-Cu-(Ag, Si) alloys, aluminum-lithium-base alloys, and Al-Zn-Mg-(Cu) alloys. Crystal structure, composition, dimensions, and aging conditions of precipitates are detailed. Effects of reversion, duplex annealing, and retrogression and re-aging are included.

This article discusses the various heat treating processes, namely, solid-solution hardening, solution treating, solution aging and dispersion hardening, for low-melting-point alloys such as lead alloys, tin-rich alloys, and zinc alloys. Heat treating of tin-rich alloys has been practiced for bearing alloys, pewterware, and organ pipe alloys. The article reviews the principles underlying these applications.

This article describes the different types of precipitation and transformation processes and their effects that can occur during heat treatment of various nonferrous alloys. The nonferrous alloys are aluminum alloys, copper alloys, magnesium alloys, nickel alloys, titanium alloys, cobalt alloys, zinc alloys, and heat treatable silver alloys, gold alloys, lead alloys, and tin alloys. It also provides a detailed discussion on the effects due to precipitation and transformation processes in these non-ferrous alloys.

Cast nickel-base alloys are used extensively in corrosive-media and high-temperature applications. This article briefly reviews the common types of heat treatments of nickel alloy castings: homogenization, stress relieving, in-process annealing, full annealing, solution annealing, quenching, coating diffusion, and precipitation. It describes the three general strengthening mechanisms, namely, solid-solution hardening, age hardening, and carbide precipitation. The article summarizes the typical heat treatment of the general families of nickel-base castings used in industrial applications. It focuses on the solution treatment and age hardening of cast nickel-base superalloys and the heat treatment of cast solid-solution alloys for corrosion-resisting applications. The article also discusses the typical types of atmospheres used in annealing or solution treating: exothermic, endothermic, dry hydrogen, dry argon, and vacuum.