State Arizona University
MET 300 Applied Materials Sciences Lab 9 6061 Aluminum Heat Treatment
By: Hugo Villarreal Priyesh Ray 4/17/2012
Introduction: The design team wants to know if they can use a heat treated 6061 aluminum alloy without having to perform an additional aging treatment. They believe that this method will save them cycle time by 1 day during the manufacturing process flow of the product. We are required the metal to have a shear strength of 30Ksi at room temperature. In order to meet these requirements, we are required to heat treat the 6061 aluminum and see if we can achieve 30Ksi of shear strength. This is to be done without performing an oven aging cycle. Procedure: Heat treating:
Once the 6061 aluminum samples in received, solution heat treat the samples at what temp and for how long?
Let one the of sample age naturally to T4 condition and age the other sample to T6 condition artificially for 8 hours Once both the samples are treated to the above mentioned conditions, Cut, mount, polish and photograph the steel samples for further analysis and compare the results with the 6061 aluminum data sheet provided
Sander/Polish: Sand and buff out all scratches to prepare the samples for microphotographs
Microscope: Once the samples were polished, obtain photomicrographs for each sample using the Nikon Eclipse MA100 microscope and Nikon Elements D imaging software. Data: The photomicrograph below shows the structure of the 6061... shouldn't we have two photomicrographs... one for T4 and one for T6....
Figure 1: photomicrograph of 6061 steel at 500X We need to add data table here...
Materials Analysis: Conclusion: