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Up Topic Welding Industry / Metallurgy / 6061-T4
- By SheetMetalGuy Date 06-15-2018 16:43
We have a small job where we cut a blank and draw a shallow cup from 6061-T4  .063 thick.
It is for an electronic component and doesn't need to be particularly strong, but completely annealed material might be so soft that it might bend up by hand too easily, as after forming it get machined to a fairly delicate structure.
We have done the job 4 or 5 times without any problem.
However this time, with the current lot of material, we can only draw it to about half the required depth before it cracks.
T4 is age hardened, and I suspect that -T4 is a very slow moving item in the distributor inventory, that we just got really old material and it has age hardened to closer to a -T6.
Is it possible to heat T4 to a softer condition such that it will age harden again without taking it to 900 degrees and having to water quench the material?
We've gone through the water quench routine a few times, and that makes things a lot more complicated, and I'd like to avoid that if possible.
Any idea of temperature if that is possible?  We can keep it in the freezer if necessary after heating.
Thanks.
lm
Up Topic Welding Industry / Metallurgy / 6061-T4

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