Normalizing in heat treatment of forgings is to heat the forgings to an appropriate temperature and then cool them in the air. The effect of normalizing is similar to annealing, but the structure is finer. It is often used to improve the cutting performance of forging materials, and is sometimes used as the final heat treatment for some parts with low requirements.

The role of normalizing

1. It can eliminate the overheated coarse grain structure and wide grain structure of castings, forgings, and welded parts, as well as the banded structure in rolled materials; refine the grains; and can be used as a predetermined heat treatment before quenching for forgings.

2. It can eliminate the network secondary cementite and refine the pearlite, which not only improves the mechanical properties, but also facilitates the subsequent spheroidizing annealing of forgings.

3. It can eliminate the free cementite at the grain boundary and improve the deep drawing performance of forgings.