In the booming wave of modern manufacturing industry, material processing technology plays a crucial role in the improvement of product performance.

Vacuum heat treatment, as an advanced and unique material treatment method, is gradually becoming the focus of many industries.

Broadly speaking, vacuum heat treatment refers to the process of heating, insulation and cooling of metal workpieces in a vacuum environment to change their organizational structure and properties.Its emergence is not accidental, but with the progress of science and technology, it is developed on the basis of traditional heat treatment technology.Although the early heat treatment can improve the performance of metal materials to a certain extent, it is often faced with problems such as oxidation and decarbonization of the workpiece surface, which largely limits the further improvement of product quality.

With the increasingly stringent requirements for material properties, vacuum heat treatment comes into being.With its unique processing environment, it has shown excellent performance in avoiding metal oxidation and decarbonization, and has gradually emerged in the industrial field.

Nowadays, vacuum heat treatment occupies a pivotal position in modern industry. Whether it is the demand for high performance metal components in the aerospace field, the pursuit of durability of parts in the automobile manufacturing industry, or the requirement for stability of precision metal parts in the electronic equipment manufacturing industry, vacuum heat treatment plays an irreplaceable role in it.It is like a magic key that opens the door to higher quality and better performance metal products.

I. Overview of vacuum heat treatment

Vacuum heat treatment is a metal heat treatment process that heats the metal workpiece under 1 atmosphere pressure (i.e. under negative pressure).

It is a new heat treatment technology combining vacuum technology and heat treatment technology. The vacuum environment includes low vacuum, medium vacuum, high vacuum and ultra-high vacuum, and actually belongs to the atmosphere control heat treatment.Its development history can be traced back to the late 1920s, with the development of electric vacuum technology, which was only used for annealing and degassing.Progress has been slow because of equipment limitations.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the successful development of air-cooled vacuum heat treatment furnace, cold-wall vacuum oil quenching furnace and vacuum heating high-pressure gas quenching furnace, so that the vacuum heat treatment process has been new development, and in the vacuum carburizing, nitrifying and other technical progress has further expanded the scope of its application.

In modern industry, vacuum heat treatment occupies an important position.It has the technical advantages of reducing oxidation and decarbonization, preventing pollution, improving surface quality, improving hardness and strength, wide range of application, energy saving and high efficiency, improving production efficiency, and is widely used in aerospace, automobile manufacturing, precision machinery, electronics industry and other fields.For example, in the aerospace field, the manufacture of high-strength alloys is inseparable from the exquisite skills of vacuum heat treatment, which can maintain the excellent performance of metal materials in extreme environments.

In short, vacuum heat treatment is playing an increasingly important role in modern industry with its unique technical advantages.