Can the vacuum heat treatment electric furnace used in the experiment be used for annealing experiments?

The vacuum heat treatment electric furnace used in the experiment can be fully utilized for annealing experiments and has significant advantages in specific scenarios. Annealing is a heat treatment process that improves the internal structure, eliminates internal stress, and enhances plasticity and toughness of materials through heating, insulation, and cooling. Vacuum environment can effectively avoid problems such as oxidation and decarburization, especially suitable for experiments that require high surface quality of materials. The following is a specific analysis:

1. The core advantages of vacuum annealing
Prevent oxidation and decarbonization
Traditional annealing problem: When annealed in air or protective atmosphere, metal materials (such as steel and titanium alloys) are prone to react with oxygen and water vapor, forming an oxide layer or decarburization layer on the surface, resulting in a decrease in hardness and fatigue performance.
Vacuum environment function: By vacuuming to 10 ⁻³~10 ⁻⁵ Pa, oxygen is completely isolated to avoid surface oxidation or decarburization of the material, maintaining surface smoothness and chemical composition stability.
Typical case: After vacuum annealing at 500-650 ℃, the surface of high-speed steel cutting tools has no oxide film, and the hardness uniformity is significantly improved during subsequent quenching.
Degassing and purification effect
Gas escape inside materials: Vacuum environment can accelerate the diffusion and escape of adsorbed gases (such as H ₂, N ₂) inside materials, reduce pores and microcracks, and improve material density.
Application scenarios:
Powder metallurgy products (such as neodymium iron boron permanent magnets) are vacuum annealed to eliminate residual pores during the pressing process and improve magnetic properties.
Vacuum annealing of welded parts to remove hydrogen gas from the weld seam and prevent the formation of cold cracks.
Uniform heating and cooling
Temperature uniformity: The experimental furnace ensures temperature uniformity (± 1-5 ℃) inside the furnace through zone heating, heat shielding design, and circulating air cooling system, avoiding tissue unevenness caused by local overheating or underheating.
Temperature control accuracy: The PID intelligent temperature controller supports multi-stage program temperature control (such as heating rate, holding time, cooling method) to meet the annealing process requirements of different materials.

2. Support multiple types of annealing processes
The experimental vacuum heat treatment electric furnace can achieve the following annealing methods:
complete annealing
Purpose: Refine grain size, eliminate internal stress, and improve machinability.
Applicable materials: medium carbon steel, alloy steel, non-ferrous metals (such as copper and aluminum).
Process parameters: Heat to Ac3 (steel) or above the recrystallization temperature, hold for sufficient time, and then slowly cool (furnace cooling or air cooling).
Advantages of vacuum: Avoid surface oxidation of steel parts, maintain the luster and conductivity of non-ferrous metals such as copper and aluminum.
spheroidizing annealing
Purpose: To spheroidize carbides in steel, reduce hardness, and improve machinability.
Applicable materials: high carbon steel (such as T12 steel), bearing steel.
Process parameters: Heat to 20-30 ℃ above Ac1, keep warm, and slowly cool to below Ar1 to achieve spherical distribution of carbides.
Vacuum advantage: prevents carbide oxidation and maintains the stability of spheroidization effect.
Stress relief annealing
Purpose: To eliminate residual stresses generated during processing, welding, or casting, and prevent deformation or cracking.
Applicable materials: welded parts, castings, cold deformed parts (such as springs, steel wires).
Process parameters: Heat to 100-200 ℃ below Ac1, keep warm, and then slowly cool.
Vacuum advantage: Avoiding surface crack propagation caused by oxidation during stress release process.
Recrystallization annealing
Purpose: To eliminate work hardening caused by cold working and restore material plasticity.
Applicable materials: cold-rolled steel plate, copper strip, aluminum foil.
Process parameters: Heat to above the recrystallization temperature, keep warm, and then cool.
Vacuum advantage: prevents metal surface oxidation and maintains surface quality after cold processing.

3. The flexibility advantage of experimental equipment
Small batch testing capability
The experimental furnace has a small volume (several to tens of liters), suitable for small-scale trial production in the research and development stage, reducing material costs and process validation cycles.
Case: Comparing the effects of different annealing temperatures on the fatigue performance of titanium alloys, experiments can be completed with only a small number of samples.
Rapid process iteration
By adjusting parameters such as temperature, holding time, cooling rate, etc., the annealing process can be quickly optimized.
Case: Study the effect of insulation time on the grain size of aluminum alloy recrystallization, and determine the optimal process window through multiple experiments.
Multi functional scalability
Some experimental furnaces can expand their atmosphere control functions (such as filling with protective gases such as Ar and N ₂), or integrate pressure loading systems to achieve composite processes (such as vacuum hot pressing annealing).
Case: Vacuum and hydrogen annealing of high-strength steel, utilizing the diffusion effect of hydrogen to accelerate the removal of decarburization layer.

4. Typical application scenarios
aerospace field
Vacuum annealing of titanium alloy parts: eliminates residual stresses generated by forging or machining, and prevents cracking during subsequent use.
Vacuum annealing of nickel based high-temperature alloys: improves microstructure uniformity and enhances high-temperature creep performance.
Semiconductor industry
Silicon wafer vacuum annealing: eliminates surface damage caused by cutting or polishing, and improves the yield of integrated circuit manufacturing.
Annealing of metal lead frame: removes cold working stress and prevents deformation during welding.
Biomedical field
Vacuum annealing of cobalt chromium alloy orthopedic implants: eliminates welding stress, improves biocompatibility and corrosion resistance.
Annealing of magnesium alloy cardiovascular stents: improves plasticity and facilitates microfabrication molding.