The week Starting October 10 2022, Gord Montgomery of “The Monty Heat Treat News” will be visiting a number of captive and commercial heat treaters around The Netherlands and Germany in addition to attending the HK22 Heat Treatment exhibition in Cologne, Germany.

Our first visit was to a company which used to be part of the “TEKFOR Group” before being acquired by AAM (American Axle & Manufacturing) just a few months ago. It now goes under the name “Metal Forming” and as such is part of one of the largest captive heat treaters in the world ‘AAM’.

This manufacturer of truck components has an in house heat treatment department consisting entirely of furnaces dedicated to annealing. The original department (shown in one of these photos) shows a number of older pit annealing furnaces which are all still in use.

The latest addition is a “Rohde” two position “bell” style annealing furnace which has been in use for just under 1 year. The furnace is capable of processing 25 tons of products per day at 700C with a nitrogen atmosphere.

While the heat treat department does not compare in size to others which can found at various AAM facilities around the globe (Poland and Mexico come to mind), it is clean, neat, well organized and as you can see at least one of the furnaces is new with the others in very nice operating condition.

Tomorrow we will show you pictures of one of the largest commercial shops in Germany, Hanomag in Hanover, Germany.

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Joern Rohde, Stefan Saul, Metal Forming, Gord Montgomery