A procedure of heating and cooling a material without melting. The heating and cooling sequence may involve temperatures above, below, and at the ambient. Controlled heating and cooling rates, and a variety of furnace atmospheres and heating media may be used. Plastic deformation may be included in the sequence of heating and cooling steps, thus defining a thermomechanical treatment. Typical objectives of heat treatments are hardening, strengthening, softening, improved formability, improved machinability, stress relief, and improved dimensional stability. Heat treatments are often categorized with special names, such as annealing, normalizing, stress relief anneals, process anneals, hardening, tempering, austempering, martempering, intercritical annealing, carburizing, nitriding, solution anneal, aging, precipitation hardening, and thermomechanical treatment.