Cooling

During the cooling phase, the workpiece is brought back to the ambient temperature. It may be necessary to comply with specific warming and cooling speeds in both the warming and cooling phases. For materials subject to high requirements, it may be necessary to divide these three phases into further sub-phases. These heat treatment processes are complex, and may be referred to as an annealing program. They may consist of a sequence of annealing processes for different workpieces, or a combination of annealing processes for a (product) range.