Know Why Stress Reliving Is Important for Welded and Tight Dimensional Parts of a machine

Stress reliving is a heating process that consists of heating a metal to a temperature to relive the residual stress due to other processes like hot rolling, welding, shearing or gas cutting. Unlike annealing and normalizing, stress reliving does not change material properties.

This reliving process is done on metals with low carbon alloys like 3mm steel plates, hot roll steel plates, and other metal and fabricated products. This process reduces the risk of dimensional changes during further manufacturing and final use of item.

During the process, the specific part or assembly parts are heated to a proper temperature and holding that temperature for a specified time will allow the part to reach that specific temperature, thus reliving internal stress. If an item is prone to this process, the end product will show less or no variation. In general, the parts like complex welded parts, casting with lot of machining, parts with tight dimensional tolerances and many such tight performing parts of big machines undergo this reliving process.

You know that processes like machining, cutting and plastic deformation build stress in a material. This stress could cause unwanted changes. Reliving process is done before final finish or polishing of the product but only after rough machining. The parts which need to be further processed or have tight dimensional tolerances should be stress relived.

Hardened and tempered parts are heated to fifty degree Celsius for stress reliving of metals. For stainless steel a high temperature solution is necessary. Other metals like copper and brass are also stress relived.