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Why Anneal?
There are three primary goals of annealing steel:
- Make the steel machinable so that it can be easily cut, drilled, and ground.
- Setup the steel for austenitizing and quenching (hardening) so that is has good heat treating response
- Provide the best possible properties in the final heat treated product
The above goals are not always 100% compatible, but we would like to offer the optimal combination based on our priorities. However, to know what the trade-offs are we need to know how annealing works first.