Aalberts, one of the largest commercial heat treaters on the planet continues to invest in more equipment, this time at their facility in  Dzierżoniów, Poland. “The Monty Heat Treat News” visited this location during a visit to Poland and this is what we saw. 

“SECO/WARWICK equipment has been selected yet again by the international Aalberts Surface Technologies Group. The company already owns nine SECO/WARWICK solutions, and this contract is the third one associated with the expansion of the machinery base in Dzierżoniów. Aalberts Surface Technologies owns SECO/WARWICK equipment working with both vacuum and atmosphere technology. This time, the Dzierżoniów hardening plant will receive an innovative AFT process line that is based on two-chamber atmosphere furnaces.

SECO/WARWICK technologies support expanding commercial hardening plants. The delivery of new devices includes: a third main furnace, tempering furnace, and an endothermic atmosphere generator as well as loading and unloading devices along with the auxiliary infrastructure. “This contract covers a main AFT type atmosphere furnace, intended for carburizing, hardening, nitrocarburizing and annealing processes,” explained Piotr Skarbiński, Vice-President, Business Segment Atmosphere Furnaces, SECO/WARWICK Group. “The furnace is perfect for manufacturing processes for various transmission components, enabling the use of both conventional load arrangements with modular accessories (mesh, grids or “cross-bars”) as well as hardening baskets” – P. Skarbiński added.

The hardening plant expansion step by step. Customers who operate specialized hardening plants demand versatile solutions enabling them to carry out many different metal treatment processes. When deciding on the expansion of a hardening plant, one does not only take into account the equipment capacity, but also its versatility, reliability and the necessary support. Commercial hardening plants do not allow for production outages, they should be ready 24/7 and their machinery should provide as many services as possible. SECO/WARWICK has expanded the machinery base in many commercial hardening plants.

“Our earlier contract dating back to 2018 covered the first delivery of heat treatment furnaces for the new hall at Aalberts Surface Technologies in Dzierżoniów. But overall, this is our ninth contract with the Group. The previous orders covered, for example, Vector vacuum furnaces or a three-chamber CaseMaster Evolution-T vacuum furnace. Last year, we delivered to the Netherlands a furnace operating under high vacuum which is not only the largest furnace with an all-metal heating chamber, but also the largest device of this kind to be operated in the Benelux. This customer has also purchased from us a universal BREW device for the tempering process. Apart from atmosphere furnaces, commercial hardening plants use two flagship SECO/WARWICK products, that is multi-chamber vacuum furnaces, the CaseMaster Evolution® (CMe®), and single chamber furnaces, the Vector®. The common denominator of both solutions is a flexible, versatile and environmentally-friendly vacuum heat treatment, which is our specialty,” added Maciej Korecki, Vice-President, Vacuum Furnace Segment, SECO/WARWICK Group,”​

Did you like this article? Click here to subscribe to The Monty.

View our recent magazines and podcasts by clicking the following link. https://themonty.com/magazine/