# Stress relief (in brass)



## kquiggle (Jan 4, 2013)

In the process of making tapered gibs for my mini-lathe, I ran into the well known problem of the extruded brass I used warping after I machined it, due to uneven internal stresses in the brass. I wondered if pre-heating the brass before machining would reduce this problem, and did a bit of web searching; I thought I would find a lot of discussion on this, but I found surprisingly little. I did find one reference that suggested that "stress annealing" brass at 450 - 500  °_F  (~232 _°_C) _for about an hour would do the trick, so I decided to try it.

Short version of the result: An hour at 450 °_F _greatly reduced, but did not eliminate, warping.

If anyone else has experimented with this, or can provide related information, I would greatly appreciate it.

Anyone interested in more details can find them on my web site.


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