Development Of Rapid Heat Solid Solution Process Of Al 7075-T6 Alloy Applying Near-Infrared Ray Heater

To improve the formability and productivity in cold forming of aluminum alloy, w-temper forming process was developed. In this process, the T6-temper blank is subjected to the solution heat treatment (SHT) and then quenched to achieve the w-temper. At present, the main problem of this process is that too long SHT time cannot meet the manufacturing cost. For example, the quenching time is 10 sec, while the SHT time is 30 min. In this paper, rapid solid solution of Al 7075-T6 alloy sheet was implemented in near-infrared ray(IR) heater. Applying IR, contact heater was developed instead of the traditional heater using cartridge heater. The results have shown that it is possible to accurately control the sheet temperature for solid solution temperature in short time. Also, compared to SHT using traditional heater, the rapidly heating using IR heater could make the mechanical properties of w-temper.