Annealing (metallurgy) brass can be cooled slowly in air, or quickly by quenching in water, unlike ferrous metals, such as steel, which must be cooled slowly to anneal. In this fashion, the metal is softened and prepared for further work—such as shaping, stamping, or forming. Annealing occurs by the diffusion of atoms within a solid material, so that the material progresses towards its equilibrium state. Heat increases the rate of diffusion by providing the energy needed to break bonds. The movement of atoms has the effect of redistributing and eradicating the dislocations in metals and (to a lesser extent) in ceramics. This
Glass-coated wire or oil. However. there are some apparatuses that can bypass some of these problems by heating the glass and the metal in separate chambers which allows for the use of metals with high melting points. Around the 1950s the Taylor-Ulitovski process was changed to a continuous feeding process of the materials in order to make these wires on a mass production scale. Metal cores in the range 1 to 120 micrometres with a glass coating a few micrometres in diameter can be readily produced by this method. Glass-coated microwires successfully produced by this method include copper, silver, gold, iron, platinum,