While it might seem like everything to do with heat treating is increasing in cost by leaps and bounds these days one very important item for all heat treaters has remained relatively constant for some time now-high temperature alloy components.

 

Virtually every single component and fixture in a heat treat furnace consists of some grade of high temperature alloy material, all of them either partially or largely composed of nickel. As an example, HT cast material is composed of 33-37% nickel, HU 37-41% and on the high end of the scale HX 47%. Admittedly we seldom run across HX material but certainly HT and HU are very common in the industry. 

 

When it comes to rod frame baskets, a staple in the industry is 330 SS which contains between 34 and 37% nickel. 

 

So where are we going with this? With nickel as the main component of many high temperature alloys-both cast and fabricated, nickel pricing largely drives the cost of furnace components and fixturing. If you refer to the attached chart you can see that pricing has remained relatively stable over the past few years and even shows a slight decline which means that pricing for items such as radiant tubes, base trays, baskets, muffles and fans has also remained reasonably stable.

 

In a very inflationary world, it is nice to see that at least something to do with heat treating has not seen enormous cost increases.