Beryllium bronze is a typical aging precipitation strengthening alloy. The typical heat treatment process of high-strength beryllium bronze is to keep the temperature at 760-830 ℃ for an appropriate period of time (at least 60min for every 25mm thick plate), so that the solute atom beryllium can be fully dissolved in the copper matrix and form a face centered cubic lattice α Phase supersaturated solid solution. Then, heat preservation at 320~340 ℃ for 2~3h to complete the dissolution precipitation process, forming γ′ Phase (CuBe2 metastable phase). This phase is coherent with the parent body, resulting in a stress field and strengthening the matrix.

The typical heat treatment process of high conductivity beryllium bronze is to keep the temperature at 900~950 ℃ for a period of time to complete the solid solution process, and then keep the temperature at 450~480 ℃ for 2~4h to realize the dissolution precipitation process. Due to the addition of more cobalt or nickel in the alloy, the dispersion strengthening particles are mostly intermetallic compounds formed by cobalt or nickel and beryllium. In order to further improve the strength of the alloy, the alloy is often cold worked to a certain extent after the solution heat treatment and before the aging heat treatment, in order to achieve the comprehensive strengthening effect of cold work hardening and age hardening. Its cold workability generally does not exceed 37%. Solution heat treatment shall generally be carried out by the alloy manufacturer. The user will punch the solution heat treated and cold-rolled strip into parts, and then conduct self aging heat treatment to obtain high strength spring components.

In recent years, China has also developed the strip with aging heat treatment completed by beryllium copper manufacturers, which can be directly punched into parts by customers. After beryllium bronze has been treated by various processes, the letters for alloy state in Europe and the United States are: A stands for solid solution annealed state. The alloy is in the softest state and is easy to be formed by stamping. It needs further cold working or direct aging strengthening treatment. H stands for work hardening state (hard). Take cold rolled sheet as an example, 37% of the cold working degree is full hard state (H), 21% of the cold working degree is semi hard state (1/2H), and 11% of the cold working degree is 1/4 hard state (1/4H). Users can choose the appropriate soft and hard state according to the difficulty of the shape of the parts to be punched. T refers to heat treatment after aging. If the process of deformation and aging comprehensive strengthening is adopted, its state is represented by HT.