Heat Treatment Technicians

Key Responsibilities

• Examine parts to ensure metal shades and colors conform to specifications, using knowledge of metal heat-treating.
• Stamp heat-treatment identification marks on parts, using hammers and punches.
• Adjust controls to maintain temperatures and heating times, using thermal instruments and charts, dials and gauges of furnaces, and color of stock in furnaces to make setting determinations.
• Remove parts from furnaces after specified times, and air dry or cool parts in water, oil brine, or other baths.
• Load parts into containers and place containers on conveyors to be inserted into furnaces, or insert parts into furnaces.
• Set and adjust speeds of reels and conveyors for prescribed time cycles to pass parts through continuous furnaces.
• Read production schedules and work orders to determine processing sequences, furnace temperatures, and heat cycle requirements for objects to be heat-treated.
• Heat billets, bars, plates, rods, and other stock to specified temperatures preparatory to forging, rolling, or processing, using oil, gas, or electrical furnaces.
• Instruct new workers in machine operation.
• Mount workpieces in fixtures, on arbors, or between centers of machines.
• Clean oxides and scales from parts or fittings, using steam sprays or chemical and water baths.
• Set up and operate or tend machines, such as furnaces, baths, flame-hardening machines, and electronic induction machines, that harden, anneal, and heat-treat metal.
• Record times that parts are removed from furnaces to document that objects have attained specified temperatures for specified times.
• Reduce heat when processing is complete to allow parts to cool in furnaces or machinery.
• Test parts for hardness, using hardness testing equipment, or by examining and feeling samples.
• Position stock in furnaces, using tongs, chain hoists, or pry bars.
• Repair, replace, and maintain furnace equipment as needed, using hand tools.
• Mount fixtures and industrial coils on machines, using hand tools.
• Start conveyors and open furnace doors to load stock, or signal crane operators to uncover soaking pits and lower ingots into them.
• Determine types and temperatures of baths and quenching media needed to attain specified part hardness, toughness, and ductility, using heat-treating charts and knowledge of methods, equipment, and metals.
• Move controls to light gas burners and to adjust gas and water flow and flame temperature.
• Signal forklift operators to deposit or extract containers of parts into and from furnaces and quenching rinse tanks.
• Determine flame temperatures, current frequencies, heating cycles, and induction heating coils needed, based on degree of hardness required and properties of stock to be treated.