Heat treatment comprises a series of operations involving heating, holding, and cooling of materials in the solid state for the purpose of obtaining certain desirable metallurgical, mechanical, or physical properties. The driving forces behind developing new heat treatment technologies are reducing the overall process time, minimizing its environmental footprint, minimizing distortion, lowering material cost, and lowering the cost of furnace operations. This paper discusses ten global trends that are driving technology development in the heat treating industry.

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