General Machining

Heat Treatments

The most cost effective way to produce materials such as acrylic or PEEK is to use either a casting or extrusion process.

Although cost effective, cast acrylic or extruded PEEK materials can be highly stressed.

To ensure stable dimensions and a long life for precision component parts, it is essential that materials are correctly heat treated to remove all stress. On materials such as acrylic, these initial heat treatment processes can result in material shrinkage of between 2% and 4%.

All plastic materials used by Carville are normalised using heat treatment processes before any machining operations take place. Subject to the component size, these heat treatment processes may require 2 to 3 days.

During the production process, all components are annealed to remove any stresses that may have been induced due to the machining process.