Metal Stress Relieving Solutions for Treated Steel
Sun Steel Treating provides metal stress relieving solutions designed to enhance thermally treated steel tooling and components. These processes are also ideal for custom machined parts and assemblies to relieve internal stresses created during the machining process. The result is a stronger, more reliable and consistent finished product.
An Overview of Sun Steel’s Stress Relieving Processes
What Is Metal Stress Relieving?
Steel stress relieving is a carefully controlled thermal treatment process that reduces the residual internal stresses within the material’s microstructure. These stresses can result from other heat treating services, such as vacuum hardening. Other metalworking processes, such as stamping, machining, and rolling can also generate internal stresses which become weak points in the finished product. Essentially, steel stress relieving is engineered to correct the material’s microstructure and remove internal distortions.
How Does the Steel Stress Relieving Process Work?
Metalworking processes such as welding, hot rolling, and machining often create internal stresses at the granular level. Likewise, the material can become thermally stressed due to other metal treatment services, such as vacuum hardening and annealing. The stress relieving process realigns the interior microstructure of the metal. This eliminates weak points, minimizes the risk of failure, and increases life cycles of the end product.
The metal stress relieving process is a relatively simple thermal treatment. Typically, we heat the material to roughly 150ºF below its transformation temperature. For steel stress relieving applications, temperatures can exceed 1200ºF. The treated products are carefully heated to the desired temperature in a clean, controlled environment. Holding the products at this temperature for an extended period of time (typically an hour or more) homogenizes the grain structure and relieves internal material stresses.
The Advantages of Stress Relieved Tooling and Components
- Helps maintain tight dimensional tolerances for steel products, especially those that will be further thermally processed.
- Creates more consistent finished products, reducing the risk of part failures.
- Unlike normalizing and annealing, stress relieving does not modify the metal’s material properties.
Steel Stress Relieving for Aerospace, Defense, Automotive, and Industrial Tooling Applications
Located in South Lyon, Michigan, Sun Steel Treating is a leading provider of metal stress relieving for a wide range of industries and applications. Since 1958, we have provided metal stress relieving and other thermal processing services to clients throughout the Upper Midwest and beyond. An ISO 9001:2015 certified domestic manufacturer, Sun Steel Treating’s team of experts stand ready to tackle your most difficult material challenges.