Stress Relieving

Machining induces stresses in parts. The bigger and more complex the part, the more the stresses. These stresses can cause distortions in the part long term. If the parts are clamped in service, then cracking could occur. Also hole locations can change causing them to go out of tolerance. For these reasons, stress relieving is often necessary.

Typically, the parts that benefit from stress relieving are large and complex weldments, castings with a lot of machining, parts with tight dimensional tolerances and machined parts that have had a lot of stock removal performed.

Stress Relieving is the controlled heating and cooling of metals to alter their physical and mechanical properties without changing the product shape. Stress relieving is sometimes done inadvertently due to manufacturing processes that either heat or cool the metal such as welding or forming. Stress relieving is done at about 650°C for about one hour or till the whole part reaches the temperature. This removes more than 90% of the internal stresses. Alloy steels are stress relieved at higher temperature. After removing from the furnace, the parts are air cooled in still air.

Stress Relieving is often associated with increasing the strength of material, but it can also be used to alter certain manufacturability objectives such as improve machining, improve formability, restore ductility after a cold working operation. Thus it is a very enabling manufacturing process that can not only help other manufacturing process, but can also improve product performance by increasing strength or other desirable characteristics. Steels are particularly suitable for heat treatment, since they respond well to heat treatment and the commercial use of steels exceeds that of any other material.