Akebono Brake Corporation, Ferritic nitrocarburizing (FNC) of Brake Rotors

One of our news items of yesterday (January 8 which can be found further down this page) concerned a fire at Akebono Brake Corporation in Glasgow, Kentucky, USA. In the news item we mentioned how Akebono was one of the first companies to process brake rotors using a gas Ferritic nitrocarburizing process. Several readers corrected us on this and we should have known better. As far as we know the first company to mass produce brake rotors using a gas FNC process was Woodworth Heat Treating, a US commercial heat treater with several locations in the US and Mexico.
http://www.woodworthheattreating.com/index.html Woodworth processes the parts in mammoth “Tip Up” style furnaces as can be seen in these photos. By the way we have always ranked Woodworth as one of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America
https://themonty.com/largest-commercial-heat-treats/