Author(s)

P. F. Stratton. D. Ho & N. Saxena

Abstract

Gas quenching has been used in vacuum furnaces for many years and its characteristics for bulk quenching of components are well known. More recently the use of gas quenching applied to single or small groups of components that were heated in either vacuum or conventional atmosphere furnaces has been proposed. Gas quenching may be seen as meeting the needs of modern "batches- of-one" processing for "just-in-time" manufacturing. It is clean, non-toxic and leaves no residues to be removed after processing. If this process is to be possible then heat extraction rates equivalent to those obtained from a medium quench oil must be achieved uniformly at the surface of real components. There are several strategies for meeting this aim: first, conventional high pressure quenching; second, moderate velocity quenching utilising a high heat transfer coe

Keywords