Annealing

An-neal′ing

,

Noun.

1.

The process used to render glass, iron, etc., less brittle, performed by allowing them to cool very gradually from a high heat.

2.

The burning of metallic colors into glass, earthenware, etc.

,

ppr.

heating; tempering by heat.

annealing ‎(countable and uncountable, plural annealings)

The heating of solid metal or glass to high temperatures and cooling it slowly so that its particles arrange into a defined lattice.
Without annealing, the quality of our metal products will diminish.

act of heating solid metal or glass

Parthasarathy, S. and Chandrasekharan Rajendran, "A simulated annealing heuristic for scheduling to minimize mean weighted tardiness in a flowshop with mean weighted tardiness in a flowshop with sequence-dependent setup times of jobs—a case study". Production Planning & Control, 1997, 8(5), 476.

annealing