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A nswers.com > Wiki A nswers > Categories > Science > Chemistry > What is the difference between annealing and normalizing?

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What is the difference between

annealing and normalizing?
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Answer:
Annealing is the process of bringing a piece of steel up to its critical temperature, and then letting it cool very,
very slowly (many hours to cool to room temperature). This causes the crystalline structure of the steel to
become all pearlite/cementite/ferrite (depending on the carbon content). All these structures are extremely soft;
the annealed condition represents about the softest state that steel can get without being heated to forging
temperature.
Annealed steel really is very soft and can be cold forged somewhat. It grinds "like butter" (a length of bar stock
could easily be bent in two along its narrow axis with your bare hands, and with a vise, it can also be quite easily
bent along its widest dimension as well). This makes it very easy to form the steel to shape via grinding or
forging.
After you grind or forge the bar to shape, you should perform a related process to annealing called
"normalizing". There's not a lot of difference between annealing and normalizing. In normalizing, the goal is to
relieve stresses and more importantly, to ensure a consistent and fine grain size rather than to soften the metal,
so the slow cool isn't quite as critical for normalizing. The grinding and or heating/cooling and hammering
performed during the shaping of the blade tends to induces stresses in the blade. Relieving work/heating
induced stresses through normalization helps prevent or reduce the amount of warpage when you harden the
blade, and refining the grain helps produce stronger blades that hold a better edge. When normalization is
done, you can perform the hardening procedure - you heat the steel up to its critical temperature again, but
this time, instead of letting it cool slowly, you quench it quickly in a quench medium (this could be water, brine,
oil, or even air, depending on the type of steel you use) so that it cools very quickly. This causes the crystalline
structure to re-arrange into a different form called martensite, which is an extremely hard form of steel capable
of holding a keen edge.
Now although you relieved stresses prior to hardening, the quench procedure tends to induces new stresses of
its own, so a subsequent tempering draw or the reheating of the blade to a relatively low temperature (well
below red hot) results in stress relief and the decomposition of some of the martensite into another form called
troosite which is slightly less hard, but much tougher. The blade thus becomes less brittle and gains more
"spring". So you see that in addition to the usual heat-treating process of hardening and the subsequent
drawing of temper, annealing and normalization can play an important role in the creation of a fine blade.
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