Heat Treating Services — Industrial Metal Treatment

The five primary heat treatment processes are annealing, normalizing, hardening, tempering, and case hardening. Annealing softens metal and relieves stress; normalizing refines grain structure; hardening increases strength through rapid quenching; tempering reduces brittleness after hardening; and case hardening creates a hard outer surface while maintaining a tough core — each serving distinct metallurgical objectives.

Heat treating involves controlled heating and cooling of metal components to alter their physical and mechanical properties without changing their shape. The core variables are temperature, hold time, and cooling rate. By precisely managing these parameters, metallurgists can increase hardness, improve ductility, relieve internal stresses, or refine microstructure — tailoring the metal's performance to meet specific application demands.

A common example is quench hardening of steel. The component is heated above its critical temperature until the microstructure transforms to austenite, then rapidly quenched in oil or water to lock in a hard martensitic structure. This dramatically increases surface hardness and wear resistance. VaporKote applies this and other processes to pump components, gears, shafts, and industrial tooling across oil, gas, and aerospace sectors.

VaporKote provides heat treating services to a broad range of industries including oil production, petrochemical refining, aerospace, mining, pulp and paper, heat exchanger manufacturing, and agriculture. Our thermal processing capabilities are designed to meet the demanding performance and compliance requirements of each sector, from downhole pump components to aerospace structural parts.

VaporKote adheres to ASTM, ASME, SAE, and API engineering codes and practices on all heat treatment projects. Each treatment cycle is monitored with automated process controls, and metallurgical analysis with certification of results is provided upon completion — ensuring full traceability and compliance with your industry's most stringent specifications.

Annealing heats metal to a high temperature and cools it slowly to soften the material, improve ductility, and refine grain structure. Stress relieving uses a lower temperature soak to reduce residual internal stresses introduced by machining, welding, or forming — without significantly altering hardness or microstructure. Both are part of VaporKote's comprehensive heat treatment service offering.

IonPlasma Nitriding (DHIN) is a surface hardening process that diffuses nitrogen into metal at lower temperatures than traditional hardening, minimizing distortion. Unlike through-hardening, it creates a thin, extremely hard surface layer while preserving the tough core. It is especially effective for gears, shafts, and precision components where dimensional stability and wear resistance are both critical.

Yes. VaporKote's Anaheim, CA facility is equipped with state-of-the-art furnaces capable of processing components up to 68 inches in diameter. Whether you need heat treatment for small precision parts or large industrial equipment, our team can design a custom thermal cycle to meet your dimensional and metallurgical requirements with full quality documentation.