Working With Metals Involves the Extruding Processes

Working with metals involves several processes such as extruding, forging, drawing, rolling, heading and spinning. These methods can be summed up to one single process that covers all of them, and it is called annealing.

Annealing is studied in the fields of materials science and metallurgy. It refers to a process in which heat is applied to materials to cause alterations and changes to their properties. Metals are exposed to temperatures that are above their recrystallization points, and then they are left to cool. The process causes the material to be ductile and soft. It also minimizes the internal stress and refines its whole structure.

The most common metals used in annealing are silver, copper, brass and steel. The first three can be immediately soaked in water to cool them faster, while ferrous metals need to be cooled down at a much slower pace. The finished product can now go through several more processes such as stamping, shaping and forming.

The term process annealing is also known as in-process annealing, subcritical annealing and intermediate annealing. It is a kind of a treatment cycle that involves heat and tries to induce ductility into a piece of material to lessen its brittleness. Ductility is an important property a material should possess in order for you to successfully use it for extruding, forging or drawing.

There are three phases in the annealing process. They are the recovery, recrystallization and grain growth phases. The first one is done to soften the metal. Impurities and defects found on the crystals are removed. The second phase happens when new granular crystals begin to grow. They are supposed to be the replacements for those that were removed or deformed during the first phase. Finally, the last phase happens when the grains or crystallites start to increase in size.