complete annealing; incomplete annealing; diffusion annealing; isothermal annealing; incomplete annealing using granular perlite (also called spherification annealing).
Full annealing is carried out after hot machining and casting of master alloys and carbon alloys. Its purpose is to originate a uniform and stable microstructure, thus letting the metal attain low levels of hardness for further machining using cutting tools, as well as to eliminate internal stress.
Incomplete annealing is mainly used to reduce the hardness of an alloy, eliminate the internal stress, and improve machinability. Hypereutectoid steel has a lamellar pearlite structure. It is hard and brittle, difficult to cut.
Spherification annealing changes the material's crystal lattice structure, turns lamellar pearlite into globular pearlite.
Isothermal annealing is used for high chromium steels to achieve uniform organization of the austenite. Diffusion annealing's objective is to reduce or eliminate the dendritic and regional segregation in the solidification process.
Quenching is a heat treatment process that involves heating the material above the phase transition temperature (or temperature at which crystal structure can be transformed into a much harder structure known as martensiteте), holding for a certain period of time, and then rapidly cooling it. Water or oil is most frequently used for cooling, but there are other cooling methods: in a pseudo-boiling layer of a solid coolant, a stream of compressed air, water fog, liquid polymer quenching medium, etc. The hardened material acquires a greater hardness, but the more the heating-cooling process is repeated, the more brittle, and the less ductile and viscous the material becomes.
Tempering is used to reduce the embrittlement and improve the plasticity and toughness after quenching.
Tempering at medium temperature is used to improve the elasticity and increase the toughness of the material when insisting on its wear resistance and hardness after quenching. This type of tempering requires heating of the material to 150—260 °C or 370—650 °C with the following slow cooling.