Cryogenic Tempering

The term “Cryogenic Tempering” is used a lot in relationship to cryogenic processing. It is our opinion that cryogenic tempering is a term that is imprecise.

Since the process rarely makes materials significantly harder (if it does, there was something very wrong with the heat treat), the term “Cryogenic Hardening” is also confusing, inaccurate, and does not convey the full impact of what cryogenic processing can do.

Cryogenic Stress Relieving

In the same light, the term “stress relieving” also indicates a specific process, and the use of cryogenics covers much more than stress relieving.

We call it Deep Cryogenic Treatment

“Deep Cryogenic Treatment” is a term that is currently being used by the scientific community to describe cryogenic treatment.  It is used in most research projects done by colleges, universities and industry.  As such it will probably become the dominant name of the process although anyone who is familiar with cryogenic science will know that -300ºF is not very deep into the cryogenic range, which starts at -244ºF according to the Cryogenic Society of America. Controlled Thermal Processing runs production cycles at -308ºF to -312ºF. The vacuum-insulated structure of our processors is efficient enough to hold that close to the true boiling point of liquid nitrogen. Holding a part at the boiling point itself is not commercially viable; getting within five percent of it is, and that is where the real-world results show up. The same applies deeper down: liquid helium brings us to about -430ºF, which is why we do not chase -450ºF.

Is it nit picking to criticize what people call the process? Maybe it is, but fancy sounding names often confuse the issue as to what the process does. We are tending to align ourselves with the scientific community in order to be concise.

One term that does not apply to what we do is Cryonics. The word Cryonics refers to the process of freezing living tissue.  The objective is to bring it back to life in the future.

The most common mix-up of all is with heat treating itself — and “cryogenic heat treatment,” the phrase most people search for, is a contradiction in terms for the same reason. We take that one apart in cryogenic treatment vs. heat treating.

For more information on Deep Cryogenic Treatment click here.