When you need hard and strong parts for aerospace and other high-stakes applications, heat treating is a great way to save money while meeting demanding specifications.
You don’t have to resort to an expensive metal like titanium to get the hardness and strength you’re looking for. Focused on Machining can help you select an alternate material that, post-heat treating, will have all the properties your part requires.
Best of all, we remain true to our promise of getting you high-quality parts when YOU need them, turning around heat treating jobs in a few short weeks.
Why Use Heat Treated Steel or Aerospace Alloys Instead of Titanium?
Titanium is almost always an option for parts requiring strength and hardness, but it can get prohibitively expensive.
In some cases, a better alternative is to heat treat steel or aerospace alloys. We can heat treat steel for $2-$5 per pound plus a $150-$200 lot fee. For the most part orders, that’s significant savings compared to the $20-$30 you’ll pay per pound for titanium.
But saving money isn’t the only advantage to choosing heat-treated steel or aerospace alloys over titanium. You can also get a significantly harder and stronger part. 4340 is an aerospace alloy that the United States developed for aircraft manufacturing of steel components. And 4340 has a strength of 260,000 psi post-heat treating, which is even stronger than titanium.
Challenges of Heat Treating CNC Machined Parts
Many machine shops no quote jobs that require heat treating because it can be a tricky and time-consuming process. It’s easy to make mistakes and end up over-or under-heat treating a part, especially when using standard methods. Under-heat treating a part means it may not be strong enough. On the other hand, over-heat treating a part can make it too brittle.
At our Denver machine shop, we use the vacuum method for heat-treated parts. We prefer this method because:
The parts are more aesthetically pleasing, with minimal risk of coming out burnt
Vacuuming delivers a more consistent result, reducing the chance of other material becoming impregnated into the parts
The parts are ready for further forming, with no signs of discoloration or need for cleaning
Why Rely on Focused on Machining for Heat Treating CNC Machined Parts?
Any machine shop can offer heat treating, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing it right. Your best bet is to rely on a shop like Focused on Machining that will never just place a part in the oven and hope for the best. Here’s what we offer our customer:
Tight tolerance furnaces
Material testing and analysis
Certified to AMS (Aerospace Material Specifications) standards
Heat Treated Pins for an Aerospace Customer
We recently made these heat-treated pins for one of our aerospace customers. Pins are so important because they hold together the elevators that make an aircraft move up and down. They’re also challenging. The pins need to be stronger than the shaft they support, but not too strong. If something goes wrong, the pins actually need to break away.
Heat-treated 4340 alloy steel was the perfect material for this part, providing the strength the customer required while also saving them money. We turned this job around in a quick 2.5 weeks, although the heat treating alone took about 5 days!
Don’t rely on just any machine shop to heat treat your CNC machined parts. Let Focused on Machining own all the behind-the-scenes work for you. For repeat production customers, we’ll even maintain an inventory of heat-treated parts to further cut lead times.
Request a quote today for your cost-effective, high-quality heat-treated parts.