Rationale

The current language associated with heat treating some martensitic stainless steels uses the term "normalize". It is proposed to replace this with "air -cooled" since, in the application being described, the steels in question will achieve their full potential hardness. This is in contrast to the typical use of the term "normalize" which generally denotes the development of uniform grain size and microstructure without achieving full hardening. For this reason, many industry reference guides state that these grades should not be normalized.