Tonight I was watching videos of different lathe operations, thinking of when I would finally get to use my lathe. I happened upon two terms I had not heard in a long time: Curie point [temperature], and Austinizing. Not the usual drivel you find on Youtube, I know, but onward we go…..

Quickly, Curie point is the temperature at which magnetic material loses it’s magnetic properties.

Austenizing is merely a process where the metal is heated to a solid solution and cooled rapidly in either oil, water (or air, as it were). This makes the steel hard, but brittle. To overcome the brittle properties of the metal, it is then usually tempered at a very controlled (hot) temperature for a controlled time to make it a little more ductile (bendable, less likely to fracture). Usually, I just hear “heat treated“.

Anyway, the actual usage of the two terms was because of confusion between them. One commenter was using the terms interchangeably. This is often the case, because a lot of steel alloys have a very close Curie point and Austenite transformation. In some cases, this is not so. M2 tool grade steel, for instance, (the stuff they make wrenches out of) is one such example.

Not really a big to do about anything, but it brought up some interesting subjects that I used to know a lot more about (as you can see, I barely regurgitated the definitions), and must put on my to do list to relearn.

Good stuff!