Heated pot of molten chloride, nitrate or cyanate salts. Neutral chloride salts heat tool steels fast and evenly for austenitizing, nitrate-nitrite salts at 150 to 400 °C serve as quench baths for marquenching and austempering, and cyanate-based salts nitrocarburize. Parts must go in dry and preheated, because moisture in molten salt can erupt violently, and drag-out has to be washed off promptly to stop corrosion.
Preheat those taps before they go in the salt bath, a wet part in there and we're all wearing it.
Also heard as
- salt pot
- salt
Related terms
Austempering
Quenching steel into a salt bath above Ms and holding it until the austenite fully transforms to bainite.
Marquenching
Quenching steel into hot oil or salt just above Ms, holding to even out temperature, then air cooling.
FNC
Ferritic nitrocarburizing: adding nitrogen and carbon below the critical temperature for a thin, hard layer.
Quench
To cool hot metal rapidly in a liquid or gas so that it hardens, or the act of doing so.