In this work, thermo-mechanically treated 42CrMo steel was subjected to cryogenic treatment conducted by means of orthogonal design method, followed by low-temperature tempering to investigate the effect of different parameters of cryogenic treatment on wear resistance of 42CrMo steel and to optimize parameters of cryogenic treatment for improving wear resistance. The results of hardness test and wear test show that cryogenic treatment significantly improves wear resistance with marginal changes in coefficient of friction and hardness. Specifically, cryogenic temperature has the largest impact on wear resistance of 42CrMo steel, holding time has medium impact, and the parameter of treatment cycles has the least impact. The optimum parameters of cryogenic treatment are −196°C for 12 hours with one cycle for improving wear resistance. The results of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffractometry (XRD) analysis indicate that marginal changes in hardness and coefficient of friction may be owing to little amount of transformation of retained austenite, and the significant influence of cryogenic treatment on improving wear resistance of 42CrMo steel can be mainly attributed to segregation of carbon atoms promoted by cryogenic treatment resulting in more precipitation of carbides in subsequent tempering.

The machining residual stress produced in the cutting process of aluminum alloy parts can easily lead to a scrap of the processed parts. In order to reduce the residual stress of aluminum alloy in the milling process, based on the Taguchi-Grey relational approach, the effects of different milling parameters on the residual stress and surface roughness of 2A12 aluminum alloy were studied. To reduce the residual stress and surface roughness of 2A12 aluminum alloy, optimized milling parameters were obtained. To further reduce the milling residual stress of 2A12 aluminum alloy, the samples processed by the optimized milling parameters were treated by cryogenic treatment and artificial aging. The residual stress of the sample was measured by the blind hole drilling method, and the evolution mechanism of the microstructure to reduce the machining residual stress was revealed. The results show that the combination of deep cooling treatment and oil bath aging can effectively reduce the residual stress on the machined surface of the aluminum alloy and facilitate a more uniform distribution of the residual stress inside the specimen. The effect of the coarse second phase on the residual stress in the microstructure is not significant, and the fine and diffusely distributed precipitation phase is beneficial to the reduction of the residual stress in the aluminum alloy.