THERMAL PROCESS HOLDINGS is a dynamic growth company providing critical Metallurgical services to virtually every industrial sector. Our strategy is to provide industry leading thermal services throughout North America from our expanding network of facilities. Currently the company operates 5 locations around the US.
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US heat treaters have little to celebrate these days when it comes to energy pricing. This article from “Bloomberg” sums up the situation very succinctly and points out that while our European fellow heat treaters are paying a great deal more the gap is narrowing slightly.
“(Bloomberg) Natural gas briefly surged above $9 per million British thermal units in the US for the first time since 2008, extending a breakneck rally as fears of a supply crunch intensified, before paring gains into close. Stockpiles of the heating and power-plant fuel are below normal for this time of year as exports are booming, and output from shale basins is muted. Traders anticipate higher-than-usual gas needs this summer to fuel US power plants as consumers and businesses crank up air conditioners to combat hotter weather. Meanwhile, hydro-power generation and coal supplies are severely constrained, leaving limited alternatives to gas.
Reflecting growing concerns about replenishing depleted stockpiles ahead of the winter, gas for July delivery has traded at an unusual premium over contracts for February. And the so-called widowmaker spread between gas delivered in March and April – essentially a bet on how low inventories will be by the end of winter – widened to the highest ever for this time of the year.
“It’s a function of the storage, and the storage situation is miserable,” said Bob Yawger, director of the futures division at Mizuho Securities USA. Gas prices could soon rise above $10, he said.
Gas prices have skyrocketed globally over the past year because of an energy crunch that has been aggravated by the war in Ukraine, with buyers in Europe and Asia vying for US supplies of liquefied natural gas. Venture Global LNG said Wednesday that it’s moving ahead with a second LNG terminal on the Gulf Coast after securing $13.2 billion of financing, while Cheniere Energy Inc., the largest US LNG exporter, signed a sale and purchase agreement with South Korea’s POSCO International.
Though the fuel is still much cheaper in the US than elsewhere because of the nation’s relatively abundant shale supplies and limited export capacity, the gap has been closing. Henry Hub futures are now trading at roughly a third of the price for the European benchmark, up from about 7% in early March.
The expiration of gas contracts for June delivery later this week may also be driving volatility. Money managers exposed to bearish wagers have struggled to close out those positions over the past couple of days, according to Dennis Kissler, senior vice president at Bok Financial Securities.”
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“The Monty Heat Treat News” wishes you a warm and Happy Memorial Day. Let us remember all the heroes who have left us and thank them all today.
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Frederick brings many years of experience within international sales and marketing activities and brings extensive knowledge of the Nordic markets to the Expanite team Before joining Expanite, Frederick has worked several years at Oerikon Balzers Coating as KAM within Technical Sales and, as that, Frederick has a broad knowledge on surface technology and materials. Frederick knows what it takes to work with clients in a technical market, understand their needs and guide them in the right direction order to find an optimal and/or tailored solution.
“I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to be a part of the Expanite team,” said Frederick Halbout. “I look forward to helping the company expand into new markets while continuing to deliver a high level of customer service to our customers”. ”Frederick has a deep understanding of establishing and keeping long standing relationships with different clients and shares our values of delivering the best customer service and the best solutions in the industry so having Frederick join the Expanite team will both benefit our clients and support Expanite’s efforts to continuously deliver value through well executed projects, and strengthen our position in the Nordic Market“ says Thomas Abel Sandholdt, CEO at Expanite.
About Expanite. Expanite offers state-of-the-art solutions for surface hardening treatment of stainless steels and titanium. With Expanite’s processes, it is possible to increase the material’s surface hardness tenfold while at the same time maintaining and even increasing its corrosion resistance. Expanite is a global organization with a combined development and production facility near Copenhagen, Denmark, and hardening capacity in both US, Germany, Korea and China. Expanite’s solutions are flexible and can be introduced directly into a customer’s own production line as part of a licensing arrangement. Learn more about Expanite at Expanite.com
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Only two words fully describe the MTI 2022 Spring Meeting: We’re BACK! Members attending the spring meeting in Hilton Head Island, SC were all pleased to see MTI meeting attendance rising back to pre-pandemic levels, with over 180 in attendance. The MTI Board of Trustees and Education Committee would like to thank all of the attendees for their participation in the 2022 Spring Meeting. Members have given rave reviews of their experience, energy, and education at the Spring Meeting. The meeting experienced numerous first-time attendees and they stated that they loved the connection, energy, ideas, content, and people.
During the meeting, attendees experienced two nightly reception and dinners, two half days of experts on CMMC Cybersecurity Compliance, economic forecasts for the next three years, a break down technical specifications, audit compliance, and how to pivot your plan in the midst of chaos to maximize your results. During each session, members engaged in sharing sessions to learn best practices from one another. One of the most exciting events of the meeting was the MTI Educational Foundation Fundraiser. 76 people enjoyed 2 hours of a high energy cornhole tournament that raised a Spring Meeting record of $14,750 for the MTI Educational Foundation Scholarships. MTI meetings continue to grow through offering relevant content while gaining a new and refreshing perspective on your business, the future, and the industry. We look forward to seeing any company in the heat treating business at MTI’s next national meeting, the premier trade show and conference, Furnaces North America 2022, in Indianapolis, IN on October 3-5.
MTI and FNA expect a sellout at the host hotel, so take a look at the link above and click on “Hotel” at the top menu to book your room, sooner rather than later. The future will show up at FNA 2022 and wants to meet you there. Change is happening fast and you don’t want your team to be left behind. Make sure to book your room and register to attend FNA 2022. MTI is a non-profit trade association representing the largest network of heat treating companies and suppliers in the world. MTI provides business intelligence, training, technical standards design and networking opportunities.
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Hydrogen – whether applied in shipping, steel production, refineries or power-to-x application – it has become the energy source of the future, yet already used in many sectors. Due to its special properties, the hydrogen gas poses several technical challenges for the respective components with which it comes into contact, so that the use of corrosion-resistant stainless steel is essential. This in turn is susceptible to wear and galling and this is exactly where the technology of the Danish pioneer for surface hardening of stainless steel and titanium comes into play.
Hydrogen – the element that comes first in the periodic table and is therefore the smallest and lightest atom among all elements – has been traded for some time as the greatest hope for future energy supply. With a mass fraction of about 70%, hydrogen is the most common chemical element in the universe. On Earth, however, its mass fraction is only 0.87% and is largely bound in water.
Starting with production, over to transport ending with the actual usage, wherever hydrogen is involved, stainless steel components are also used, some of which are subject to extreme wear depending on the application and naturally subject to galling. In the past, this problem was countered with traditional wear protection methods and the respective components were protected with a coating (e.g. hard chrome plating, DLC or chrome carbide) or classic plasma nitriding or salt bath diffusion layers. However, these processes are generally known to affect the corrosion resistance of the stainless steel parts negatively.
The solution to this dilemma – a surface hardening that protects against wear and galling while at the same time maintains or even improves the corrosion resistance of the materials – was developed by the founders of the Danish company Expanite and is increasingly being used in the hydrogen sector. For example, components of high pressure and control valves or clutch systems used in the hydrogen infrastructure up to components for fuel cells are hardened. Sustainably prevent hydrogen embrittlement
“Our customers often ask whether the Expanite technology increases the risk of hydrogen embrittlement, which is not the case,” explains Dr. Holger Selg, application expert and Expanite Sales Director DACH, who going further into detail: “The cause of the hydrogen embrittlement can be traced back to the diffusion of the hydrogen into the material, and in theory the Expanite layer acts as a diffusion brake to a certain extent. Charged with nitrogen and carbon, the Expanite surface is harder for the hydrogen to penetrate than an untreated surface.”
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In Germany we see that Schaeffler Bearings, one of the world’s largest captive heat treaters has closed their ball bearing facility in Homburg, Germany and is putting all of the equipment up for auction. Included in the equipment being auctioned off is the entire in house heat treat facility which consists mainly of large rotary retort furnaces. While a few heat treaters still run rotary retorts they have largely fallen out of fashion and now occupy a very tiny part of the heat treat world. View our recent magazines and podcasts by clicking the following link. https://themonty.com/magazine/
“Automotive revenues were down 7% against the relatively strong performance of automotive markets in the early part of 2021. The operating environment for automotive producers continues to be challenging, as OEMs strive to increase production but are held back by raw material and maintenance part shortages, which in turn lead to volume declines.
General industrial revenues (including energy) were up 21%. The sector benefited from continued capital investment in a number of markets that make up this sector.
Aerospace & defence revenues were 18% higher as the civil aerospace business continued to grow strongly, but revenues remained 25% below 2019’s levels, despite the price increases and energy surcharges.
Emerging market revenues were up 18%, driven by strong growth in Eastern Europe, although China revenues declined in April as a result of Covid-related plant shutdowns of our RESTRICTED facilities. These are also impacting the business in May. Mexico, which largely supplies into customers serving the US automotive market, registered a low single-digit revenue increase. Specialist Technologies’ revenues grew 12% against a very strong period last year. It is worth noting that since our Specialist Technologies are less energy intensive processes, the contribution to revenues from energy surcharges was lower.”
https://www.bodycote.com/investors/reports-and-results/
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During the summer of 2021, Induspec performed deep cryogenic treatment (DCT) of several large bucket teeth. The work was performed in conjunction with a confidentialmining company and two different brands of bucket teeth were treated and ultimately tested in real mine operation. We think that real life testing is incredibly important. Thousands of academic articles are available showing the effectiveness of DCT in a lab. However, you don’t care about how things work in a lab, it needs to work on your site!
Our partner mine used the teeth on a bucket which uses five (5) bucket teeth and it is known that the off-cab side end tooth, in what we call “Position 5” is always the first to wear out. While the teeth start at a nominal length of 24”, they are changed when they have worn down to 13.5”.
While the un-treated teeth wore at an average rate of 0.065 inches / hour, the cryogenically treated tooth wore at only 0.045 inches / hour; a 31% improvement! Similar improvements were observed in position 3 (32% improvement) and in position 4 (31% improvement).
MANUFACTURER 2. For Manufacturer 2, a slightly less rigorous testing protocol was undertaken consisting of only two tests. In the first test, deep cryogenically treated teeth were set in positions 3, 4 & 5 whereas in test 2 only untreated teeth were used.
In test 1, the teeth wore down to 13.5” after 354 hours whereas the untreated teeth only lasted 280.5 hours. DCT provided a 26% improvement in the life of the teeth! Comparing wear rates, we see that the deep cryogenically treated #5 tooth wore at a rate of 0.028” / hour of operation while the untreated tooth wore at 0.036” / hour. DCT provided a 22% improvement in wear rate!
CONCLUSIONS. An improvement in bucket tooth life of 34% and 26% respectively were observed when the bucket teeth of two different manufacturers were deep cryogenically treated by Induspec. The tooth wear rate was decreased by 31% and 22% respectively corresponding well with the observed life extensions.
In real life, these exciting test results mean two important things:
1) By utilizing Induspec’s deep cryogenic process, bucket tooth change-outs can be reduced by 20 – 30% depending upon the brand of bucket teeth being utilized
2) If you are like this mine, all teeth on a large excavator are changed when one tooth reaches the minimum useable length. Based on this common sense approach, savings can be optimized by only cryogenically treating the teeth, or tooth, that are wearing the fastest!
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While the pandemic drastically altered normal business proceedings around the world at least one heat treater used the opportunity to add both a new process and new equipment. Metex Heat Treating in Brampton, Ontario, Canada one of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America as ranked by “The Monty Heat Treat News” (Find out how they rank at 50 Largest North American Commercial Heat Treats 2021 | The Monty) has indeed been busy over the past two years. During this time the family owned and run business added gas nitriding to their list of processes and at least 3 major equipment additions;
- A pit furnace with a weight capacity of 6,000 pounds designed for gas nitriding with SSi controls was installed and is now in operation. This marks the company’s first foray into nitriding.
- In 2020 the firm installed a Can Eng 6,000 pound per hour mesh belt furnace line designed for processing fasteners. This is the third 6,000 pound per hour line Metex has installed over the past number of years and when combined with their other smaller lines gives the company a mesh belt furnace capacity rapidly approaching 30,000 pounds per hour making them one of the largest processors of fasteners in North America.
- In 2021 the company also added to their batch IQ department in the form of a new AFC-Holcroft batch IQ furnace with working dimensions of 36” X 72” X 36”.
With all these recent additions Metex now ranks as the largest commercial heat treater in Canada. Watch to see if in our updated list of the largest commercials in North America Metex moves up the list.
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Anoop Bawa and Jordan Montgomery