Surface treatment
Heat treatment
The heat treatment of metal parts involves targeted heating and cooling cycles that optimise mechanical properties such as hardness, ductility and yield strength. During production, internal stresses often arise in the material – for example, as a result of welding processes or machining steps. These internal stresses can lead to distortion or crack formation, for example.
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Stress relief annealing serves to reduce these internal stresses, thereby improving the dimensional accuracy and reliability of the components. We can carry out annealing in our workshop. For other heat treatment processes, we have reliable partners with whom we have worked for many years to optimise your parts.
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In addition, the annealing process is often used as an intermediate step to minimise deformation during thermochemical processes such as nitriding or quenching. We can implement this ideally in conjunction with plasma nitriding.
Plasma nitriding
Like nitrocarburising, plasma nitriding increases surface hardness. Plasma nitriding technology was revolutionised by Jean-Nicolas Georges' invention of the active grid at ANG. The plasma nitriding process offers significant improvements over the gas nitriding process, e.g. no need to use toxic ammonia, lower gas and electricity consumption, and the possibility of partial surface nitriding. It is therefore more environmentally friendly than other nitriding processes.
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Active grid technology also enables homogeneous temperature distribution in the furnace. This makes it possible to treat different masses of parts to be nitrided at the same time.
ANG also offers S-phase nitriding for stainless steel.
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Oven dimensions:
ø1000 x 1800 mm & ø400 x 2800 mm
For research: ø200 x 300 mm
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We have a well-equipped laboratory for quality control after nitriding. This is particularly helpful for our research activities in Luxembourg.