OUR SERVICES
Comprehensive Heat Treatment Services for Optimal Performance
WE DRAW OUR FOCUS TO
FABRICATIONS FOUNDRIES FORGE SHOPS BAR STOCK / MERCHANTS WIRE AND FASTENER INDUSTRIES
At Harchris Heat Treatment, we offer comprehensive annealing services to reduce material brittleness, applicable to stainless steel, cobalt/chrome, high-temperature alloys, and titanium. This process involves slow cooling to achieve desired mechanical properties.
Our solution annealing process dissolves precipitates and transforms the material into a single-phase structure, followed by rapid quenching to maintain a softened state, ensuring optimal metal properties.
ANNEALING
At Harchris Heat Treatment, we enhance the mechanical properties of metal components through precise heat treatments, crucial for maximizing performance. Our treatments, integral to the manufacturing process, involve applying heat or cold to harden, soften, or relieve stress without altering the part's shape, thereby improving strength, machinability, formability, or ductility.
Serving a wide range of industries, we offer top-quality heat treatment services performed by specialist technicians using state-of-the-art machinery. Whether you need standalone heat treating or heat treating, we are ready to quote on your project.
STANDALONE HEAT TREATMENT
Harchris Heat Treatment specializes in post weld heat treatment for the steel and metal fabrication industries in South Africa, including pressure vessels, piping, storage tanks, buildings, bridges, offshore platforms, and power plants.
Mandatory for compliance with welding codes for materials like carbon steels, stainless/high alloy steels, and work-hardened steels, post weld heat treatment involves heating, soaking, and cooling to reduce residual stress. Benefits include improved ductility, reduced hardness, decreased risk of brittle fracture, relaxed thermal stress, tempered metal, removal of diffusible hydrogen, and enhanced metallurgical structure.
POST-WELD HEAT TREATMENT
Maximize the strength and wear resistance of steel parts with our targeted hardening treatments, designed to meet exact performance needs. Suitable for materials like cast iron, SG42, and high chrome castings, this heat treatment enhances surface hardness and significantly improves wear resistance for demanding applications.
HARDENING SERVICES
In our age hardening process, alloys are heated at low temperatures for extended periods, allowing precipitates to form and strengthen the lattice structure, which increases hardness and durability. This treatment is ideal for aluminum alloys, both wrought and cast, and precipitation-hardenable stainless steels like 17-4PH martensitic. Our specialized method includes solution treating (Condition A) followed by precipitation hardening to maximize strength and resilience.
AGE HARDENING
Our hydrogen removal heat treatment effectively eliminates absorbed hydrogen in steel, reducing the risk of hydrogen-induced cracking in weld joints. This process ensures the steel’s durability and integrity by safely removing residual hydrogen from the material.
HYDROGEN REMOVAL
After quenching, materials often become hard and brittle with internal stresses that can lead to failure. Tempering addresses this by reducing brittleness, relieving internal stresses, and enhancing wear resistance, ductility, and toughness—ensuring a more resilient, balanced material.
Our quench hardening process heats metals to 800–1100°C, followed by rapid cooling to achieve a martensite transformation, resulting in a harder metal for ferrous alloys. Depending on the alloy and specific requirements, we utilize air quenching or liquid quenching with oil or water, ensuring ideal hardness while minimizing cracking and distortion.
QUENCH(air, water, oil) + TEMPER
Our controlled pre-heating process removes moisture from refractory linings, protecting the integrity of the lining materials without causing damage. This method prepares refractory linings for safe, effective use.
REFACTORY DRYOUT
Enhance the durability and performance of your materials with our stress relieving services, designed to reduce residual stresses and prevent distortion caused by welding, grinding, and bending. This process involves heating the metal below its lower critical temperature and cooling it uniformly, making it ideal for fabricated materials like tankers, gas cylinders, and vibrating screens.
Harchris can accommodate workloads up to 18 meters in length and 4 meters in height, with a maximum weight of 45 tons.
STRESS RELIEVING
We provide comprehensive annealing services to reduce material brittleness for stainless steel, cobalt/chrome, and high-temperature alloys. This process involves heating the metal to a specific temperature and cooling it at a controlled rate to refine its microstructure, enhancing ductility, toughness, and workability. Our annealing services contribute to more efficient manufacturing and improved product quality.
Harchris can accommodate workloads up to 6 meters in length and 2 meters in height, with a maximum weight of 45 tons.
ANNEALING
Achieve superior machinability and restored ductility in your steel components with our specialized spheroidising treatment, ideal for high-performance applications. This industrial heat treatment enhances formability by creating a structure of dispersed spheroidal carbides in medium and high carbon low alloy steels, including materials like MAT8, 15B36, and 15B37.
SPHEROIDISING
Restore the structural integrity of your materials with our normalising services, designed to refine grain structure and enhance mechanical properties for optimal performance. This process involves an austenitizing heating cycle followed by cooling in still air, applicable to a wide range of ferrous products, including low, medium, and high carbon wrought steels, as well as various castings. Normalising balances structural irregularities, improves machinability, homogenizes material properties, and achieves a fine-grained structure.
Harchris can accommodate workloads up to 6 meters in length and 2 meters in height, with a maximum weight of 45 tons.
NORMALISING
Optimize the toughness and ductility of your metal components with our sub-critical annealing process, which enhances machinability and reduces hardness. This soft annealing technique operates below 730°C, forming an even distribution of globular carbides in the steel, resulting in a softer and tougher material. The goal of sub-critical annealing is to achieve a fine grain structure, ensuring optimal performance in your applications.
SUB-CRITICAL ANNEALING
Ensure the homogeneity and stability of your alloyed metals with our solution annealing services, which enhance corrosion resistance and mechanical properties. This process dissolves precipitates and transforms the material into a single-phase structure, followed by rapid quenching to prevent re-precipitation, resulting in a softened state. Primarily applied to metallic alloys, solution annealing helps reduce concentration differences of alloying elements, mitigate micro segregation, and alleviate stresses for improved performance.
Our quenching process effectively softens non-ferrous metals, including manganese, copper, aluminium, and certain high alloy steels, such as austenitic stainless steel (304, 316)