Tempering stainless

A

aandreotti

Joined
Aug 10, 2022
Messages
4
Good afternoon. using copper plates instead of aluminum, wouldn't it be better for tempering stainless steel?
Thank you.

Alessandro
 
Yep, copper is better than aluminum, but you'll never really know the difference in use. Hoss is the real authority on the matter.

BTW, you might fill out your profile to your location in the world. Sometimes it helps when offering advice.
 
Tempering is sometimes used as a generic term for heat treating.

Copper will make good quench plates as long as they are flat.

Hoss
 
To many people, Copper looks good because it has very high thermal conductivity. However, it has low Specific Heat Capacity and it's expensive. I did the math a while back and it was pretty clear (blindingly obvious, at least to me) that upgrading to thicker Aluminium plates would be a better way to get a greater heatsink and would be a lot cheaper than messing with Copper, assuming the Aluminium plates you are already using are not up to the job.
 
I agree with Timgunn. Thick aluminum plates actually work as good or better than copper plates at a much lower cost.

I have 3" thick, 4" wide, and 18" long plates. Got them at a scrap yard for scrap aluminum price. All my stainless blades go in the plates. I leave the blade in the stainless foil envelope. I can do a dozen blades before the plates warm too much. A few minutes in a bucket of cool water and they are ready for more blades.
 
I was thinking perhaps the OP already had the copper on hand to use, without having to purchase aluminum plates. Even with the low Specific Heat Capacity would it not still work as well as Aluminum? and if on hand, copper would be less expensive.
 
When I looked at it, I was in more-or-less that position: I had some lengths of 12mm x 100mm Copper busbar in my potentially-useful pile.

At the time (2016) I could sell the Copper for scrap and buy Aluminium drops from a local supplier without adding any extra cash. I wasn't looking to use them myself. I'd built a Heat-Treat oven for someone who had been using one of my Propane HT "forges" for Carbon steels and wanted to use Stainless steels. I also had a couple of Aluminium heatsinks from old (20 HP-plus) VFDs in the pile, so these went with the oven in the end.
 
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