Monday Morning Briefing

In people news we see that Linda Hasenfratz, CEO of auto parts company Linamar was recently named Canada’s outstanding CEO of the year. Over the years Canada based Linamar has grown at an amazing pace and in the process become one of the larger captive heat treaters in the world with heat treating departments now on several continents. It’s amazing how often the Linamar name comes up when it comes to heat treating. James Cross who for many years worked with controls company SSI UK recently left the company which we mentioned a few weeks back. We can now say that he just got engaged to his long time girlfriend and will be taking a new position in Dubai of all places.  We see that Thermal Processing Services http://www.vacuumheattreat.com/ in Greenville, SC, USA is adding some more equipment. The company was started a number of years back by Kevin Cook (who was formally with Accurate Brazing also in Greenville) and while it is still a relatively small commercial heat treater we are impressed by how far he has come. The addition is an Ipsen vacuum with working dimensions of 24” X 36” X 18” and it will join several other vacuums Kevin has including the VFS show below.

Another company which is adding capacity is Thermex Metal Treating in Edmonton, Canada. Recently they took delivery of their second vacuum nitrider from SECO/WARWICK a Zero Flow Gas Nitrider which came from Poland. It is either operational now or very close. Thermex has been quite busy these days as they also recently added a batch IQ furnace with working dimensions of 36” X 48” X 36”.

Well lets see how Nickel Pricing is doing so we can decide whether it is a good time to buy more baskets and base trays. It would appear that over the past year it has gone up but is now on a downward trend again so it is almost exactly where it was a year ago. We would suggest that probably at least for the near future there should not be any shocks when it comes to alloy purchases which is the best you can hope for when it comes to replacing alloy.  

Heat Treating Indonesia. Damian Bratcher of SSI sent us this brief report about a recent seminar he did in Indonesia; “Super Systems Inc, KANTHAL and PT Tempsens conducted a technical seminar in Cikarang, Jakarta, Indonesia this week. The seminar covered CQI-9, atmosphere generation, process verification, furnace and heater maintenance, thermocouples, flow control and several other areas of interest to the participants. The heat treat market in Indonesia is primarily Japanese Automotive, motorcycle components and fasteners. Super Systems Inc. develops and manufactures products for the thermal processing industry. The products include probes, analyzers, controllers, software solutions, flow control and engineered systems. Kanthal(r) is a world-leading brand for products and services in the area of industrial heating technology and resistance materials. TEMPSENS has become one of the largest providers for thermal and cables solutions, having manufacturing facilities in Germany, India and Indonesia.”

We have two items from the UK to round things out for this out for the beginning of this week, the first about a captive operation TWI;  “TWI is pleased to announce the opening of a new, state-of-the-art vacuum furnace facility to be used in supporting members with their development and pre-production requirements. The new furnace enhances TWI’s commitment to support its members in solving their industrial challenges. The new furnace facility will offer a range of thermal processes, including vacuum brazing and heat treatment, with capability for operation with argon, nitrogen and also a partial pressure of hydrogen. To enable us to support our members’ manufacturing and quality requirements, the furnace is run in accordance with the requirements of AMS 2750E standard and full quality documentation is available in support of process development.”

Our last item is also about the UK where it appears a company by the name of,  Kepston Furnace Brazing & Bright Annealing in the West Midlands is just taking receipt of a new vacuum furnace from Vacuum Furnace Solutions Ltd., another UK company.