Originally Posted by
ccdjg
No, you can't retemper a spring that is too soft just by heating it, but you can retemper a spring that is too brittle and make it softer if you heat it to a temperature higher that in was originally tempered at.
The trouble is you only find out that a spring is too brittle after it has snapped!
The heat treatment sequence for making a spring is to first heat it to a red heat and quickly quench. That makes it extremely hard and brittle. Then you remove the brittleness by tempering, which means heating it again, but to a much lower temperature and letting it cool naturally. The higher the tempering temperature the softer the result. The trick is to get the correct temperature for tempering, as a good spring has very specific requirements.
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