Gas-Flame Treatment

a group of technological processes for heat-treating metals with hot gas flames from welding torches. These include gas welding; gas-press welding; surfacing of steel, hard alloys, and various nonferrous metals; soldering (especially with copper and silver solders); oxygen cutting of steel and oxygen-flux cutting; oxygen gouging (removing a surface layer from steel); cutting-out of flaws from steel ingots with oxygen; dressing-off of ingots on all lateral surfaces and removal of flaws in the outer metallic layer (scale, rust, old paint, and other contamination); heat treating of metals (tempering, annealing, and so on); spraying of powdered materials on a metal surface to obtain a coating of metals or of nonmetallic materials such as ceramics and plastics; and metallization, that is, the spraying of drops of molten metal with a high-speed gas jet. Many of the gas-flame treatment processes are automated.