[cncneo]

We recently purchased a furnace do some stress relieving of small 01 tool steel and 303 stainless parts. Does anyone know what the stress relieving temp. cycle is for these materials? If not, how about a resource that could?

Thanks!

[NC Cams]

Prior to heat treat, we like to subject tool steel and high alloy steel parts to a 1200 deg F stress relieve for 1 to 1.5 hours with furnace cool.

This relieves residual machining stresses and parts don't seem to distort as much/as badly when we subsequently heat treat them. The high temp S/R is real helpful in complex shapes or parts with varying cross sections.

HOWEVER, you can run into decarb problems unless you use a neutral atmosphere. Be careful with decarb....

A low temp stress relieve of 250-350 works after light machining or grinding to relieve light residual stresses. Not so much problem with decarb.