That's the story out of the supplier's mouth. We will probably never know what actually happened, but let's put it this way - if I sold some bearings to a customer, there's no way in hell I'd tell them "Okay here they are, you better go have them heat treated later."
And normalizing has to happen within a certain time frame after quench and temper, like, right after or the part is going to start cracking. As the knowledgeable suppliers of these parts, the manufacturer was in a specialized business and responsible for the performance of the end product.
Whatever actually happened, it was all in the US, so blaming "China" for a poorly-managed, fuckedup process is totally dishonest.
(btw, the China end of it was handled abominably also. One of the few times I went out with expats was to a new wine bar on Xinzha lu. One of the guys there was supposed to be supervising the construction of the spans. He had plenty of stories but the appalling part was, his supervisors in the US refused to listen or do anything. So much for American "knowhow" and "management skills". The rest of that night was typical, HC busted my identity to Green-Eyed Lady, married to the head of Abbott Laboratories and screwing everything that walked, later we ended up doing shots off the boobs of the bar girls over on Jiaozhou lu, back when it was fun. You guys and your "freedumb", you don't have a clue. Most of the foreigners that went to China ended up going home six months later, broke, drunk, divorced, and totally messed up by their brush with actual freedom.)
