Castool Tooling Systems, based in Uxbridge, Canada, designs and manufactures production tooling systems for the extrusion and die casting industries. For the extrusion sector, the company pioneered the fixed dummy block, thermally stable container, single cell die heater, and other innovations.

Recently, Castoool completed the construction of a new facility, in which the company has installed of heat treat and nitriding furnaces — providing the plant with some of the largest capacity equipment in North America.

“We perceived there was a shortage of quality heat treat and nitriding sources in North America to support the Tooling Revolution we are experiencing,” said Paul Robbins, president of Castool. “Both die cast presses and extrusion presses have increased in size and pressures. We are being required to manufacture shot sleeves, stems, and liners in larger diameters and longer lengths than ever before. It is best to heat treat these items vertically and to guarantee best structure with a vacuum quench up to 12 bar.”

The new facility includes several heat treating and tempering furances from Ipsen, which is capable of vertically heat treating dies up to 90 inches tall or 20,000 lbs. This includes:

The nitriding equipment was supplied by Nitrex. The new vacuum nitriding furnace includes with nitrocarburizing capabilities and can nitride pieces up to 61 inches in diameter and 98.5 inches high, with a load capacity of 14,000 lbs.

Castool’s ISO 9001 certified heat treating and nitriding facility operates according to most automotive standards. The company’s in-house laboratory capable of microstructure and chemical analysis, strength and reliability testing, and nitride layer evaluation.”

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“Metal Finishing Company just added a new larger Air Age oven on 3/17/23. The Next Gen Air Age Oven was supplied by McLaughlin Furnace Group. The furnace will have a work zone of 60” x 192” x 60” with a temperature range of 300F – 1400F with a +/- 10F range. This furnace meets AMS2750G and allows the ability to process a variety of materials and processes that will require aging, tempering, subcritical annealing, and stress relieving.

Metal Finishing ventured into heat treating in 2012 and became NADCAP approved in its Aluminum Heat Treating division in 2013 and opened its Steel Heat Treating facility in 2014 and became NADCAP approved in 2015. Both Divisions are currently under 18-month accreditation with NADCAP. Metal Finishing Company known for its Aerospace accreditations in Finishing processes, also has state of the art NDT offerings and Shot Peening capabilities was established in 1940 and is currently operating under the 3rd generation ownership.

Duane Heinrich, General Manager of the Thermal Processing Group is excited to be adding increased capability which he believes will decrease thru put time and offer savings for current and future customers all over the country. Metal Finishing Company works closely with their preferred vendors like the McLaughlin Furnace Group for all their batch equipment needs. In working with Jeff McLaughlin and his team we have had great success in repairs and new builds of batch style equipment and endothermic generators. The McLaughlin Furnace Group has vast knowledge and work to deliver the best product for our needs. We are glad to have them as part of our team.”

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“A Chinese manufacturer of a wide variety of vacuum circuit breakers trusted SECO/WARWICK for the second time by ordering vacuum furnaces for metal heat treatment. This order includes three Vector vacuum furnaces that ensure a very high vacuum level and temperature uniformity within the entire load. SECO/WARWICK is one of the few companies in the world providing this type of equipment for electrical equipment manufacturers.

In 2017, this Partner purchased two SECO/WARWICK furnaces for the first time. Their reliability and high quality of finished production made them decide to develop further production protocols, choosing the SECO/WARWICK Group again as their industrial furnace supplier.

“The high-vacuum brazing system consisting of three Vector furnaces will be delivered to the Chinese manufacturer of electrical relays and switches. We are glad that our Partner decided to use our solutions again, because it means that the previous systems work flawlessly. It must also be admitted that the specificity of this electric power control production requires incredible precision. Circuit breakers need a high level of vacuum and temperature uniformity. They are brazed in vacuum furnaces in a very high vacuum; therefore, it was necessary to use an efficient pumping system consisting of a turbomolecular pump and a dry pump. I can proudly say that such a specific solution can be produced by only a handful of companies in the world, and we are one of them. However, our solutions have the best parameters, and this was the decisive factor in choosing SECO/WARWICK as the technology supplier,” – explains Maciej Korecki, Vice President of the Vacuum Furnace Segment in the SECO/WARWICK Group.”

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“Quakertown, PA – Vacu Braze, a precision heat treatment facility, recently purchased and installed an American-manufactured vacuum furnace to expand its clean vacuum processing capabilities. The new furnace is now fully operational and already yielding benefits in the company’s state of the art facility in Bucks County.

The new furnace is capable of working temperatures up to 3000 °F with quench pressures of up to two bar. It features a 12” x 12” x 18” hot zone and operates at vacuum levels in the 10^-5 to 10^-6 torr range. It has the ability to operate at partial pressures of nitrogen, argon, or hydrogen to meet a wide range of processing needs. This furnace increases Vacu Braze’s capacity for quick turnaround times of small lots. Featuring a temperature uniformity of ±10 °F, the furnace conforms to all the requirements of AMS 2750 to meet demanding needs for the aerospace industry and beyond. Vacu Braze continues to look for opportunities to invest in infrastructure and equipment to provide more robust capabilities and reliable results for our customers across the United States.

Vacu Braze is a precision heat treatment facility located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. At the forefront of thermal processing, their work has been trusted by industry leading manufacturers in the medical, aerospace, defense, and power generation fields. With a commitment to quality and a proven track record for speed and reliability, Vacu Braze is a partner you can count on. Learn more at vacubraze.net.”

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It is estimated that there are several hundred commercial heat treaters in North America, probably at least half of these are small and medium sized family owned and run businesses-such is Cambridge Heat Treat in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada.  Founded in 1982 by Bob Robbins, it is now owned and run by brother and sister Peter and Cheryl who are very much “hands on” owners. Again their furnaces are fairly typical for a commercial heat treater; batch IQ furnaces, vacuums furnaces, a nitriding system and several large carbottoms. 

“The Monty Heat Treat News” has profiled Cambridge twice in the past, the most recent profile can be found at https://themonty.com/cambridge-heat-treating-celebrates-40th-anniversary/

Today we have for you these photos taken just last week during a brief visit by Gord Montgomery. In them you can see a very clean, well run shop with our hosts Peter and Cheryl.

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According to this press release a commercial heat treater in Turkey by the name of Saglam Metal has recently installed a new,  pit style gas nitriding furnace as can be seen in the PR below. Largely due to a substantial presence of automotive suppliers in the county Turkey boasts a large, varied and very advanced heat treatment industry both captive and commercial.

“NITREX has delivered a turnkey system to SAGLAM METAL, a Turkish commercial heat-treating company. With this new addition to its services portfolio, SAGLAM METAL now offers controlled nitriding, nitrocarburizing, and post-oxidation treatments for a wide range of metal applications to different markets and customers.

“SAGLAM selected NITREX based on the recommendation of our local representative and the positive experience of other system users in the Turkish market, in addition to the high quality of our product supported by perfect nitriding/nitrocarburizing results,” mentions Marcin Stokłosa, Project Manager at NITREX Poland. The versatility of the NITREX turnkey system, process technologies, and library of proven recipes make it adaptive for a wide range of applications. For SAGLAM, the system is used to nitride/nitrocarburize a variety of different parts, part sizes, and materials to various specifications for the automotive, extrusion, tooling, and other manufacturing industries.

The turnkey system delivered to SAGLAM METAL includes a 5500 lb. (2500 kg) load capacity pit-type furnace, model NX-1020, as well as technologies for controlled gas nitriding (NITREGR for AMS 2759/10 compliance), controlled nitrocarburizing (NITREGR-C for AMS 2759/12 compliance), and in-process post-oxidation (ONCR). These process technologies enhance the wear and corrosion resistance and overall aesthetics of the treated parts.”

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AVION Europa GmbH & Co. KG is German company supplying various parts and components to the heat treatment industry (incidentally there is an AVION Heat Treatment Equipment in Ohio also). The company recently announced they opened another facility in the Lower Rhine area of Germany as we can see in this press release.

“Avion continues to grow: Lower Rhine branch. In February 2023, AVION Europa GmbH & Co. KG, headquartered in Hagen, opened an additional branch in Bedburg-Hau. For historical reasons, the district of Kleve in particular is a kind of stronghold for furnace construction in which AVION was able to gain additional, experienced personnel with the new branch.”

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Laser heat treating represents a miniscule portion of the heat treating market but it is one that we run across from time so it was with great interest that Gord Montgomery of “The Monty Heat Treat News” recently visited a company in Clinton Township, Michigan, USA who offers laser heat treating.

Synergy Additive Manufacturing LLC is a company that specializes in Laser heat treating and provides equipment and services for this process. It was founded in 2017 and has roughly 10 employees.  In addition to laser heat treating and building the equipment itself they also offer laser cladding for remanufacturing. This is all focused on the oil and gas, aerospace, marine, and precision machine tool industries. 

It would appear that the main advantage of laser heat treating is that it is extremely localized which translates into very little distortion. A perfect example which we witnessed are stamping dies. As most of the die does not require heat treating the laser process is able to very accurately target the areas which do require hardening leaving the rest of the die seeing little heat and consequently no distortion. While the cost is higher than typical heat treating the additional costs are more than compensated for by the fact that there is reduced machining.   

We don’t anticipate laser heat treating taking over the industry any time soon but we can see that in some applications it has definite advantages and we would expect that we will run across the technology on a more regular basis going forward.  These photos show a typical system heat treating an automotive stamping die.

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In our quest to see Heat treatment departments around the world, Gord and Dale Montgomery of “The Monty Heat Treat News” are visiting Laos and Vietnam. While this photo has nothing to do with heat treating it is rather interesting. This is “The Gateway to Heaven” located on the China/Vietnam border.

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In the UK we see that Mr. John Sheahan very recently joined Busch VFE, a division of Busch Vacuum (odd that the Busch name comes up again today, we have had several news items about the company recently). John brings a lifetime of experience to his new position as Senior Technical Manager – Controlled Atmosphere. John has worked with UK companies such as Vacuum Furnace Solutions and Vacuum & Atmosphere Services.

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