Can I heat treat high speed steels and powdered steels?
Yes, a Cress furnace set up for 2400F can heat treat high speed steels and powder metal tooling. But first, I generally don’t recommend heat treating these metals if you only do them occasionally. The reason I take this route is because high speed steels have extremely short austenizing soak times. Most all of them need to be soaked for 5 minutes maximum per inch of thickness once they reach austenization temperature. So, over soaking them in the length of time they are in the furnace is extremely critical, and that soak time literally comes down to seconds. In fact, every second in excess time takes away longevity of the tool’s life. For that reason, I generally suggest sending the tools to a good commercial house that works on high speed tools everyday. But, if you have more than just an occasional piece to do and your operator is able to do some scrap pieces and record how he does them, then by all means, you can heat treat these steels very successfully. One further word of caution
