The North American Heat Treat industry lost a very good man yesterday, Mr. Pete Callert of Shelby Township, Michigan, USA. For almost 30 years Pete was President of Heat Treat Reps, Inc., an independent manufacturers rep firm servicing the North American thermal treatment industry. If we had to sum up Pete we would say that he was always a little larger than life, outgoing, energetic, loud, full of life and a “hugger” from way back. He was a top notch man and we will all miss him.

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L&L Special Furnace has delivered a highly uniform box furnace to a distributor of equipment to maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) facilities located throughout the world. The L&L Model XLB124 has working dimensions of 11” wide by 10” high by 22” deep. The furnace is capable of heat-treating a wide variety of tool steels – from D-2 to high-speed M-2 tool steel, along with low-temperature tempering. It is equipped with a sealed case for inert atmosphere capability, as well as a fully functional atmosphere control panel with pressure regulator, flowmeter and manual shut-off valve.

Elements are very evenly spaced around the chamber. There is a manually operated, spring-assisted vertical door. Included is a NEMA 1 control cabinet with a Eurotherm program controller, high-limit backup system, thermocouples, fusing, and all interconnection wiring. Power control is accomplished with quiet two-zone, long- lasting solid-state contactors. The furnace hearth is a rugged cordierite plate with ceramic support.

The Model XLB124 is insulated with 2-1/2” lightweight firebrick and backed up with 2” of insulating board. The bottom is reinforced with a high-density calcium silicate that provides extra support for the load weight.

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From one of the largest heat treaters in the UK we have this press release;

“FEBRUARY 15/2023; Extra Nitriding Capacity added to Wallwork Birmingham. Increasing the total units to 8 for the group, this 940mm diameter x 1100mm deep unit will vastly increase capacity for the site and group, and help service the UK manufacturing base for gas nitriding. This is again further commitment from the Wallwork group to continue investing in plant to satisfy current and future customer demand. Further investment in the Birmingham site will continue throughout 2023 with the delivery of 2 new Vacuum furnaces due online early second quarter.”

Over the years “The Monty Heat Treat News” has been fortunate enough to visit several Wallwork locations. Our last visit was in 2021 when we had this summary and photo of the firm’s Bury location.

“OCTOBER 2021. Wallwork Group, Bury, UK; Very recently “The Monty Heat Treat News” was fortunate enough to be able to visit commercial heat treater Wallwork in Bury, UK a trip which we last made in 2013. Wallwork Group

Alloy Heat Treatment, Engineering, Castings & Vacuum Equipment | Wallwork Heat Treatment (wallworkht.co.uk) has a number of locations not all involved in heat treating, our interest of course lies in the commercial heat treat facilities of which the facility in Bury, UK is the headquarters.

If any commercial heat treat facility can be considered full service it would be this one. During out tour we saw salt, sealed quench furnaces, nitriding, aluminum drop bottom ovens, Induction, vacuum and vacuum carburizing. What was of most interest to us was the changes and investments in the past 8 years. While they were impressive and numerous the most obvious examples were in the vacuum department with some new additions, the most recent one being a vacuum carburizing system.”

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“The Monty Heat Treat News” would like to share the press release below about Winston Heat Treating purchasing 2 new temper furnaces from Delta H. Below that we have a previous article about Winston Heat Treating making the list of largest commercial heat treaters in North America.

Dayton, OH: DELTA H® recently supplied twin SCAHT®-HD (Heavy Duty) Series convection furnace systems to Winston Heat Treating. The furnaces replaced older tempering systems that were extremely difficult to qualify to even Class 5 (+/- 25F). Pyrometry expert Andrew Bassett of Aerospace Testing and Pyrometry (ATP) recommended to Winston Heat Treating management the acquisition of DELTA H furnaces as “the easiest furnace brand to qualify and maintain for aerospace pyrometry compliance, for this specific application”. The furnaces had to be “heavy duty” for rugged daily use in a commercial heat treating facility. Another challenging aspect was the ability to heat rapidly but also to cool just as fast, without damage to interior metal as a load heat treated at 1000°F could be quickly followed by the next at 300°F. The result is that the new DELTA H furnaces can heat and cool in a fraction of the time of the previous systems.

ATP independently demonstrated both systems as capable of passing Class 1 uniformity (+/-5°F), throughout the operating temperature range, but qualified them as Class 2 (+/- 10°F) from 300°F to 1200°F. Both are set up with Instrumentation Type B and feature 2 load thermocouples.

The furnaces feature a guaranteed certified TUS volume of 2 feet wide, 1.5 feet high and 2 feet deep with a maximum continuous operating temperature of 1,200°F. Both are designed to receive baskets of parts from many nearby heat treating operations for secondary heat treatments. Temperature control and data acquisition are provided by Super Systems and feature the SSi 9130 controller / programmer. Both furnace systems were quickly integrated into their Super Data facility monitoring system – with zero learning curve.

The SCAHT®-HD Series is available in a variety of sized with current models featuring a guaranteed TUS volume up 2’ x 2’ x 4’. All models feature the high performance characteristics and attention to detail that have distinguished DELTA H® for compliance to strict aerospace and Nadcap standards.

“We were looking for a partner to replace existing tempering furnaces that had become too costly to maintain and could no longer meet required pyrometry standards. Our goal was to install reliable and modern furnaces that were specialized for our small batch/job shop work. DELTA H delivered exactly that as well as outstanding technical and service support. When it’s time to sunset the remaining tempering furnaces in that department, DELTA H will be our first call.” David Reger – President, Winston Heat Treating

Previous article. Since 1999 “The Monty” has been publishing annually a list of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America based upon annual sales, our 2021 list can be found at https://themonty.com/articles/50-largest-north-american-commercial-heat-treats-2021-2/ This year readers will see we became much more ambitious and expanded the list to the 50 largest. In our 45th spot we have Winston Heat Treating.

In 1959 Winston Heat Treating was formed to service the local tool & die market. Since then the company has always focused on moving forward with new technologies and in the 1970’s the firm became a real pioneer in vacuum hear treating which resulted in Winston becoming one of the first to achieve both ISO and NADCAP status. Like so many on this list this is a family owned business with David Reger acting as President and his father John remaining very active. We have watched Winston grow and more importantly invest and it is a fine example of a modern commercial heat treater.

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Earlier this week “The Monty Heat Treat News” profiled one of the 3 locations Aalberts surface technologies’ HIP | braze | heat treatment division maintains in the Greenville, SC, USA region (https://themonty.com/aalberts-surface-technologies-invites-the-monty-heat-treat-news-to-visit/) Today we look at a second location, this one located on Pelham Road in Greenville.

This facility stands out because it is strategically located to support a key customer with vacuum brazing for the power generation industry, while adding redundancy, growth and capacity within the region. Opened in 2016 it achieved NADCAP certification 5 years ago making it the first of the Aalberts locations in the Greenville area to achieve this impressive milestone.

Currently it has vacuum brazing, heat treating and product testing, however the infrastructure is in place to add more capacity almost literally on a moment’s notice.

It’s not surprising that each of the 17 Aalberts surface technologies HIP | braze | heat treatment locations in North America including the 3 in the Greenville area encourages the local managers to embrace the “Aalberts Way” including the “be an entrepreneur” principle empowering them to have the latitude to do what they feel is best for their customers and the company as a whole.

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Ion (plasma) nitriding is an environmentally-friendly and safe technology allowing the treatment of ferrous alloys in a very controllable way [1-6]. The active nitrogen species are formed directly at the surface needing hardening and not in the entire vacuum chamber. Therefore, the process uses a very limited amount of processing gases, such as nitrogen and hydrogen, doped occasionally with small amounts of hydrocarbons, if nitrocarburizing is needed. As compared to gas nitriding, this method uses less gas [1]. This is the result of constant ionization and reionization of the processing gases by plasma; while in gas nitriding, the decomposed/cracked ammonia is lost already for the nitriding reaction and must be replaced with fresh gas.

AHT’s Large Nitriding Units Are Perfect for Stamping Dies & Gas Compressor Cylinders

Advanced Heat Treat Corp.’s large plasma nitriding equipment allows for the processing of many large parts at the same time. Figures 1-3 show loads of stamping dies and gas compressor cylinders during and after plasma processing.

Stamping dies are the typical cast iron parts treated by plasma nitriding. The main reason for recommending plasma is a good surface roughness after processing especially when the parts are made of the gray cast irons [2-4].

Other cast iron parts quite often treated by plasma are the parts of significant sizes such as gas compressor cylinders. It should be noted here that plasma nitriding allows for easy mechanical masking of the selected surfaces, which should stay soft, such as threaded holes masked off with the bolts as seen in Fig. 2.

Benefits of Plasma Nitriding and Nitrocarburizing of Cast Irons Parts

Plasma nitriding/nitrocarburizing of cast materials, such as gray cast iron, has an advantage over gas nitriding since the active nitrogen species formed from nitrogen and hydrogen during this process do not penetrate deeply into the surface’s open porosities, grooves or other surface imperfections characteristic of gray cast iron. In gas nitriding, ammonia does penetrate those spaces and it also goes into the delineations between graphite particles and the matrix forming locally a much deeper compound layer, resulting in increased volume of the material at the surface. Therefore, roughness of this material is significantly increased after gas nitriding but after plasma nitriding it did not change much. This can be seen in Fig. 4-7 shown below.

When gas nitriding of the gray cast irons would be used, its different nitriding mechanism would result in a deep penetration of the material by the active nitrogen species such NH radicals and this can cause a significant change of the surface roughness [2, 3].

As can be seen in Fig. 4 – 7, plasma nitriding compared to gas nitriding has no nitriding mechanism-limited application characteristics in processing of any cast or porous materials. On the other hand, gas nitriding, because of its ability to penetrate deeply into those materials, cannot be used easily in such applications [2-4].

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Solar Atmospheres of Western PA is pleased to announce the approval of a critical Boeing specification for the oil quenching of alloy steels in accordance with Boeing’s specification BAC 5617.

Michael Johnson, Sales Director states, “We are honored to earn this accreditation from Boeing. The approval for our new vacuum oil quench furnace, the NEO, represents a massive addition to Solar’s heat treat capabilities. The NEO’s vacuum chamber is designed to thermally heat parts with the use of work thermocouples, transferring into a vacuum protected vestibule within 20 seconds, and finally immersing a maximum 2000 pound load into a hot agitated 3000 gallon oil quench bath. All of this processing is done without a single flame or a puff of smoke! Additionally, the inert processing and fast reliable transfer times provide our customers with superior metallurgical properties. Maximum through hardness is achieved and the surface contamination of flight critical components is totally eliminated. From landing gear to additive manufacturedcomponents, the NEO is unlocking an entirely new world of bright, clean, safe, and environmentally friendly oil quench processing for us! Now Solar can support additional Boeing programs including their extensive domestic supply base.”

For additional information about Solar Atmospheres, contact Mike Johnson at 1-855-934-3284 x2223, email at
[email protected], and visit us at solaratm.com.

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It is rather ironic that our “Images of Heat Treatment, SC” shows a photo of a substantial pit furnace at IMT Duncan in Duncan, South Carolina, USA when in actual fact the company is best known as the only large continous heat treater in the US state of South Carolina. Let us start at the beginning.

Going way back to July of 2008 Gord Montgomery of “The Monty Heat Treat News” first visited IMT-our original notes can be found below. Since that time the company has grown and expanded although it is still run by Mr. TIm Meyers a true heat treater if ever there was one. The most noteable changes since our original visit is the addition of a 2500 pound per hour mesh belt furnace line, a substantial addition and the installation of a very large pit furnace which is one of the 2 images you are seeing. The addition of the second mesh belt furnace line gave the company the largest commercially available continous heat treatment capacity in the state.

While some things have changed the top notch control systems have not, they still rival any that can be found in the industry today.

This photo shows Mr. Justin Kalweit, IT Manager beside Mr. Drake Leithold, Plant Manager in front of the 72″ X 72″ pit furnace. If you ever find yourself in the Duncan, SC area and want to see a very impressive atmosphere heat treat shop IMT Duncan would certainly fit the bill.

“JULY 2008; IMT Duncan, LLC. Continuing our tour of South Eastern US commercial and captive heat treaters we arrive today at IMT in Duncan, South Carolina. This is a commercial heat treater that in former times was owned by HTG, a multi-location commercial heat treater based in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Going back about 2-3 years it was sold back to the original owner Al Kalweit along with their sister company IMT York, LLC (York, SC)-please feel free to correct us if our facts are not 100%. This is an interesting operation and we understand very different from times gone by. Not that unusual from many commercial shops in the area in that they offer batch IQ capabilities, continuous furnaces, brazing furnaces and a few other processes. What is impressive is the advanced state of their data logging and order entry systems. Even including captive heat treaters with multi million dollar budgets this has the most advanced computer control of furnaces that we have ever seen (largely developed on their own by the way) and includes fingerprint scanning before any changes can be made. All of these initiatives were formed under Al Kalweit, Justin Kalweit, IT Manager and Tim Meyers, GM. Tim is long time commercial heat treater who is opinionated, knows his stuff and gets things done.”

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Recently it was announced that bearing company TImken had acquired a North Carolina, USA firm by the name of American Roller Bearing Company, a supplier of industrial bearings. In and of itself this is not especially exciting for a heat treat news website such as “The Monty Heat Treat News” however it becomes interesting due to the fact that American Roller Bearings has a large in house heat treating department.

It comes as no surprise that a manufacturer of large roller bearings would heat treat their product in pit carburizing furnaces and that is certainly the case with American Roller Bearings. The company has approximately 6 pit carburizing furnaces from manufacturers such as Surface Combustion, Lindberg and Austria based Aichelin. Shown in this photo is a pretty standard pit hardeing furnace, in this case one manufactured by Surface Combustion of Ohio.

The press release below gives a few details about the acquistion.

“NORTH CANTON, Ohio, Feb. 1, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — The Timken Company (NYSE: TKR; www.timken.com), a global industrial leader in engineered bearings and industrial motion products, has acquired the assets of American Roller Bearing Company (ARB), a North Carolina-based manufacturer of industrial bearings. ARB’s offerings join Timken’s industry-leading portfolio of engineered bearing solutions. ARB, which boasts a large U.S. installed base and strong aftermarket business, generated sales of more than $30 million in 2022.

“ARB’s end-market mix, customer base and aftermarket position fit our Timken business model extremely well,” said Richard G. Kyle, Timken president and chief executive officer. “We’re proud to welcome ARB and its employees into The Timken Company.”

ARB employs approximately 190 people and operates manufacturing facilities in Hiddenite and Morganton, N.C. Prior to this transaction, three generations of the Succop family owned and operated ARB since its founding in 1911. Timken funded the transaction with cash on hand,”

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Aalberts Surface Technologies (the world’s second largest commercial heat treater) recently invited Gord Montgomery of “The Monty Heat Treat News” to visit their Fairforest, SC, USA facility (this location was formerly known as Ionic Technologies).

In 1998 Netherlands based Aalberts made their first investment in the North American commercial heat treat industry in the form of a “greenfield” site in the Greenville, SC region. It was certainly a bold move on the part of the firm as they had little experience with commercial heat treating in North America and do not typically start locations from scratch. Nevertheless the initial investment in a single vacuum hardening furnace and vacuum tempering furnace under the capable leadership of Mr. Ray Monahan proved to be an instant sucess. In 2000 the first plasma nitriding furnace was installed and from these rather humble beginnings we now see a very substantial commercial heat treating facility.

What “The Monty Heat Treat News” saw yesterday was a 48,000 square foot facility with 5 plasma nitriding furnaces, 3 gas nitriding units and 5 vacuum furnaces including a very substantial Ipsen vacuum unit installed in 2020. At this point in time the firm’s revenues are roughly 40% plasma nitriding, 40% vacuum hardening with the balance vacuum nitriding.

Ray Monahan has retired from the company and it is now in the very capable hands of Mr. Craig Rawley, Plant General Manager. Aalberts has several surface technoglies plants in the region and Gord Montgomery will be reporting on two others in the coming days along with several other companies involved in the heat treat industry in the area.

“About Aalberts Surface Technologies; In 2021 Aalberts began rebranding their heat treating and surface treament facilities as “Aalberts surface technologies”. The Fairforest facility was then aligned with the Aalberts surface technologies Heat Treatment US group which includes the companies formerly known as Applied Process and Premier Thermal.

In 2023 Aalberts surface technologies realigned the Heat Treatment US and Accurate Brazing divisions into the new HIP | braze | heat treatment. Aalberts surface technologies has 17 facilities in the HIP | braze | heat treatment division footprint. They are now one of the largest providers of heat treatment services in the US.

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