Short temper, typically around 120 to 175 °C, applied within minutes of quenching to high-carbon or high-hardenability parts when the full temper has to wait. It takes the edge off the peak quench stresses that cause delayed cracking without lowering hardness much, and the parts get their normal tempering cycle later.
Temper oven's full till midnight, give the dies a snap temper at 300 so they don't crack sitting there.
A snap temper buys time; leaving glass-hard tool steel on the cart overnight buys a crack.
Also heard as
- snap draw
Related terms
Tempering
Reheating hardened steel below its lower critical temperature to trade some hardness for toughness.
Quench crack
A crack that forms during or soon after quenching from thermal and transformation stress in hardened steel.
Glass hard
Fully hardened and untempered, so hard and brittle that a file skates off and a drop could shatter it.