Furnace Builder Ipsen is having a good year, no make that a great year with a vacuum furnace backlog of over 60 furnaces which might be a record for the company. This photo shows one of the largest projects the company is working on, all we can tell you at this time is that the system is destined for a captive heat treater involved in the energy sector. As work on this monster system progresses we will be posting additional photos.
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It is quite unusual to see a commercial heat treater close it’s doors for good and sell off the furnaces and building separately but it does happen from time to time. A couple that come to mind that have closed down in the past few years would include the Robert Wooler Company in Dresher, PA., and Donovan Heat Treating in Philadelphia, PA but these are exceptions. Unfortunately we have just been informed that a commercial heat treater in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA has recently closed their doors for good-Precision Heat Treating is no more with the equipment being sold off. We know little about this company although it had been in business for over 70 years and had roughly 10 employees. A quick look at the equipment gives an indication as to why, it would appear to be old and tired with little sign of new investments. It is a shame to see such a long established company disappear.
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So why is this experienced group of heat treaters at Centek Group ecstatic with happiness? Because they just read the March 2022 issue of “The Monty Heat Treat News” and now they have the absolute latest news about the global heat treatment industry https://fliphtml5.com/gvbzt/di
“Centek Group-In House Heat Treatment of Oil & Gas Components; This is how Centek Group, a manufacturer and captive heat treater describes themselves; “Founded in 2001, Centek Group specializes in the development of engineering solutions for casing running environments. Our focus has always been to reduce risk and rig time. We design and manufacture a range of revolutionary centralizers which provide unprecedented stand-off: giving optimum pipe centralization, aiding pipe rotation and easing the string to total depth without issue. https://www.centekgroup.com/”
To a layman such as myself this means the company designs, manufactures and supplies centralizers, a product used when drilling for oil or gas. This is done in two manufacturing locations, the first in Newton Abbot, Devon UK, the second in Oklahoma City, OK, USA. “The Monty Heat Treat News” team was able to get a half day tour of the location in the UK and this is what we can report.
This location has always been a firm believer in keeping the entire manufacturing process in house and this includes heat treatment. In approximately 2014 the decision was made to update the entire heat treatment department and the end result was an Ipsen 2 row gas fired “pusher” style furnace, using endothermic atmosphere provided by a single retort Ipsen generator.
In overall concept this would be considered a fairly typical “U” shaped pusher design with loading and unloading in the same area, high heat, oil quench, wash, temper and a feature we always like to see-an automated “tray flipper” to provide longer life to the cast base trays. The entire system is controlled by an up to date PLC system with datalogging, with atmosphere controlled by oxygen probes.
What is rather unusual though is the cleanliness of the entire operation, not a breath of smoke or a hint of quench oil to be found in the entire department. Originally this was a family run, employee owned company and while this is no longer the case the family “feeling” and pride lives on.
While this entire project is very much a family affair we have to mention that the fellow in charge of the heat treatment department, Mr. Phil Hayes is a lifelong heat treater who takes his job seriously and he perhaps more than anybody else is responsible for the fact that the department runs so smoothly. Vacuum & Atmosphere Services provides help as required.
While we have not personally seen the location in Oklahoma City, USA our understanding is that it is largely a mirror image of the UK facility although the furnace was provided by AFC-Holcroft, a US manufacturer.
These photos will give you a very clear view of the entire facility. Our thanks go out to the entire Centek Group who were so incredibly hospitable during our visit.”
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This interesting press release comes from heat treat industry supplier Vacuum & Atmosphere Services (VAS) in the UK, a company “The Monty Heat Treat News” visited in late 2021. We are including a photo we took of a recent VAS installation, this was taken at captive heat treater Krohne in Wellingborough, UK. Gord Montgomery of “The Monty” is on the left, Aaron Long of VAS is on the far right.
“A leading furnace servicing company is looking forward to making further progress in 2022 on the back of a successful year and a strong order book of domestic and international business. Vacuum & Atmosphere Services (VAS), based in Smethwick, saw more than £1m in additional service work generated by a new-look management team as it built on more than two decades as a market leader in its industrial sector.
A trusted partner for leading brands, VAS launched in 2000 to offer services for vacuum and atmosphere furnaces before the company progressed to offer the complete service package to the heat treatment industry, from bespoke new furnaces to spare parts. Originally started by two engineers, VAS now employs 31 staff and provides furnace services for a range of clients including Mercedes, GE Power, Moog and Collins Aerospace. Seen within their sector as an engineering company run by engineers, VAS is expanding its products and services for clients in the UK and abroad by adopting new technology including hi-tech control systems.
Managing Director Mike Long said results for the last 12 months were pleasing given the bigger picture for the UK economy. Mike said: “Our financial performance for 2021 was on a par with pre-Covid years, despite the challenging economic headwinds, with the business lined up to exceed this level in the coming years. “We firmly believe the business is on a journey to meet the requirements of customers as they change, with VAS adapting in turn to be there to deliver high standards of service as our market moves forward.”
The VAS company motto is “Quality from experience”. Although the business has extensive experience of its sector it is not afraid of moving forwards to embrace the change ahead. Mike explains: “The company has made a conscious effort to prepare the younger generation of leaders to be able to take on the challenges ahead of them to lead the company to further success. Over the last 12 months, the VAS senior management have supported and funded management training for the figures likely to be at the heart of the business in the years ahead.”
Having completed their management courses, Aaron Long has been promoted to head of vacuum sales, Greg Walker leads atmosphere sales and Lee Buttery has become projects manager. Following on from these promotions, a group of managers have completed Black Country Chamber of Commerce training, resulting in Lee Hollis, James Long and Mike Oldham all taking on middle manager roles. Andy Nisbet was appointed to the newly created role of quality and health and safety manager to ensure compliance with the fast changing regulations around Covid and to use the time to ensure quality check systems were in place.
Mike attributes an increase in service contracts of £1m per year, generated over the past 12 months, as being proof that the young managers can make a quick impact. Mike said: “The Covid pandemic has changed things and made us aware of the need for future planning. We firmly believe that if you always do what you have always done you will always get what you always got. So investing and supporting in the younger leaders has paid off.” The VAS team are making conscious, practical efforts to reduce their carbon impact, while VAS adapts its offer to keep ahead of the industry changes. The team are increasing their services around digital control systems and growing their energy efficiency offering.
VAS have introduced a long term strategy to bring in apprentices and future talent. Two apprentices have progressed to be engineers, with a new one on board to begin training. VAS has also earned its official gas registration after two engineers achieved their qualifications. Head of Atmosphere Products Greg Walker says the future of VAS looks “more positive now than ever before”. He says: “Going into 2022 we have a bigger order book than ever before. Covid has make us take a step back and define what we want the business to be.”
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Controls company Super Systems UK recently appointed Mr. Stephen Biggs as Sales Director, Super Systems Europe. Stephen has extensive experience in the heat treatment industry as you can see in his introduction below. You can see the rest of the SSE team in this photo.
“My name is Stephen Biggs and I am pleased to be able to introduce myself as the new Sales Director here at Super systems Europe.
My path to Super Systems has taken me into many of the world’s biggest manufacturers, OEM’s and blue-chip companies in diverse markets across the globe. I have always worked in complex and technically challenging environments and thrive on such challenges.
Some of you may know of me from my years at PhoenixTM, where I was the USA sales manager responsible for selling in process data logging and thermal profiling systems across all heat treatment processes.
I developed a real enjoyment for the heat treat world and the people in it while at PhoenixTM and am very excited to be returning to the industry I truly enjoy.
I have travelled the globe extensively in my career which has given me a broad wealth of Experience and cultural understanding, which I am pleased to now bring to Super Systems Europe. I established a reliable, trusted and industry respected team of USA sales agents across the country, and became a High Temp process and AMS2750 / CQI-9 specialist in the USA. I have helped engineer, promote and establish ground-breaking products to address specific market requirements and have always had a super keen focus on customer service and satisfaction, that I believe will fit right in here at Super Systems.
I bring with me years of Thermal profiling experience and AMS2750 / CQI-9 TUS experience, having worked directly with major furnace manufacturers, many OEM,s auto and aviation manufacturers, plus tier one suppliers to auto and aviation as well as many heat treaters both captive and commercial plus special / sensitive processes including defence.
I look forward to being able to meet and work with clients old and new in the coming months and to working closely with you all on any projects that you feel Supersystems Europe could help with. I am very excited to be working with such a great and talented team of individuals here at Super Systems Europe and being able to offer truly industry leading products and services across such a wide field of atmosphere process applications here at Super systems Europe.”
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Thermetco is a second generation heat treater founded by Mr. Andre Houle. The firm has over 100 employees and offers Carburizing, Vacuum Hardening, Austempering, Plasma Nitridng and Carbonitriding. In the past several years the company has moved to a new location, acquired two competitors and added a number of new furnaces. It is ranked as the second largest in Canada.
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It has always struck us as a contradiction in terms that very low temperature cryogenic systems can be considered to be part of the heat treatment process. In this rather interesting article Mr. Jack Cahn of Deep Cryogenics International explains to us the success he has had in the treatment of Crusher Cones which are used in the mining industry.
ATLANTIC MINING IS A profitable gold mine operating in Nova Scotia, Canada. Owned by the Australian firm St. Barbara, they constantly work to improve miner safety, increase environmental stewardship, and lower operating cost. One method they chose to achieve these goals embraces an innovative technology called deep cryogenic treatment (DCT).
DCT is a cold thermal process that increases the abrasive wear life of metal items such as ground engagement tools, conveyers, and gears. The process is similar to heat treating, but in the opposite thermal direction. Items are placed in a highly insulated tank and slowly cooled to the optimal temperature – near -196°C – using alloy-specific recipes. Following a return to ambient, items are tempered to increase fracture toughness and eliminate hydrogen embrittlement.
DCT is low cost, permanent, carbon neutral, and very effective. It is normally done after heat treating but it can also be performed after an item has been manufactured and shipped to an end customer. In production, it costs about 10 to15 per cent of the original item to increase wear life by 20 to 40 per cent. Challenges to adoption
In prior years, obstacles to commercializing DCT were small sized equipment, few service providers, and no testing or research support. No one knew how to certify DC-treated parts since, unlike heat treating, the process doesn’t increase part hardness, leave visible high temp colour bands, or change an item’s dimensional size. As a result, mining equipment original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) often made improvements based on material alloy, heat treat protocols, or surface treatments. Without DCT, only the ‘hot side’ of thermal processing was being employed – leaving much of the potential benefit still on the table.
Technology advancements. In 2018, Deep Cryogenics International (DCI) opened the world’s only DCT research lab, quietly tucked into a small oceanfront town in eastern Canada. As demand grew, they added more treatment capacity. Atlantic Mining was an early technology adopter when they discovered that DC-treated core saw blades yielded two times the wear life of untreated saw blades. Other mining customers began to use the process on gears and slurry pump seal plates. Saw blades, gears, and tooling are relatively small, low-cost items made of martensitic steel, which is easily improved by both heat treating and DCT. The bigger question is how can we improve the wear life of higher cost and much larger parts that are at the heart of critical, non-redundant platforms such as cone crushers?
Cone crushers rely on impact force and abrasive wear to crush rock, which are also the key failure modes associated with the short
life of the two primary components – the mantle and bowl liner. Unlike ground engagement tools, ball media or mill liners made from carbon steel, cast iron, or chrome moly, cone crusher wear parts are cast from manganese austenitic steel. Usually supplied as 13 to 22 per cent manganese castings, this material exhibits a unique wear property called work hardening – the ability to harden under compressive load. This phenomena, also known as TRIP or TWIP, is the result of:
• The chemical/physical percentage of manganese, carbon, and chromium;
• The temperature and method of heat treating;
• The final grain structure of the casting; and
• Precise control over the size, quantity, and location of carbides within the matrix.
The breakthrough. Beginning in 2019, DCI conducted several mechanical property tests on DC-treated manganese steel. After demonstrating significant wear improvement in crushing granite using their ASTM G81-97(a) Gouging Abrasion Wear Tester, DCI developed a proprietary thermal formula that controls material grain growth and carbide distribution while maximizing the TWIP effect. DCI generated a prediction model that compared baselinesupplied items against DC-treated items and then against DCtreated and surface modified items, using a special process (SP). When they shared the results with Atlantic Gold, the first purchase order to DC-treat full-size mantles and liners was generated.
Houston, we have a problem… and a solution! Unfortunately, no existing DC tanks were large enough to process mantles or liners of this size. Scaling the technology from DCI’s round tanks (seven cubic feet and 42 cubic feet capacity) to work in a large rectangular unit 30 times bigger (1,280 cubic feet) is a complex scientific, engineering, and manufacturing problem. Undeterred, and with a generous grant by Canada’s NGEN and additional funding by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), DCI set out to build the largest and only industrialsized deep cryogenic tank in the world. Cryogenics scientist Dr. Jeff Levine consulted on the thermo-kinetic design and tank construction that is taking place at CTS in Nova Scotia.
The complex platform control requires multiple cryogenic valves, blowers, and thermocouples to sample part temperature and an ability to precisely meter the flow of liquid nitrogen before expansion into gaseous state at -196°C. Future Designs is supplying controls and Chart Industries is building a large storage dewar for liquid nitrogen. Third-party independent testing will take place at Red Deer Polytechnic by Dr. Tonya Wolfe and her CIM team. Lloyd’s Register will qualify both the deep cryogenic process and the equipment for international registration and approval. DCI will use a variety of methods to certify parts that have been DC treated.
At 8’ x 8’ x 20’ and with a 30,000 lb DCT capacity, the CP-36K is the largest cryogenic processor built to date and will be operational this fall. Induspec, a new DCT production facility in North Bay, Ontario, may add this capacity to support the mining and forestry communities. Made in Canada and launched first for mining use in Canada, the CP-36K will serve DCI’s charter of “making things last longer” – no matter how large the parts may be.
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“L&L Special Furnace Co., Inc., has shipped a large gas-fired normalizing furnace to a worldwide manufacturer of pipe, tube and fittings used for various military contracts. The furnace was scheduled for delivery at the end of Q4 2021 and ran about four weeks behind schedule due to various supply chain issues.
It is rated to operate at temperatures from 1,300°F / 704°C to 2,200°F / 1204°C and heated with six medium-velocity burners. The furnace will be able to maintain uniformity of ±25°F / 12.5°C at temperatures above 1,300°F / 704°C. The L&L model FCG4410 has working dimensions of 48” wide by 48” tall by 120” deep.
The car-bottom-style furnace features a load car that moves in and out of the unit on supplied railroad-type rails. The door is mounted to the car, which is motorized with all required stops and clearances. The side seals are pneumatic and seal to the car bottom once the car is inside the furnace. Castable piers provide good support for up to a 10,000-pound load. The furnace is completely insulated with ceramic fiber modules. The control is a floor-standing NEMA12 panel with fused disconnect at the source. All fusing and interconnections are included. The furnace is controlled by a Eurotherm Nanodac program control. Three-zone burner control is provided to promote uniformity. Overtemperature protection is included along with a six-input paperless chart recorder and jack panel.”
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Metex Heat Treating just finished installing a new Batch IQ furnace and you can watch the full video below. Metex is ranked as the 25th largest North American commercial heat treat and you can see the full list by clicking the following link: 50 Largest North American Commercial Heat Treats 2021. Raman Bawa of Metex recently did a podcast about fasteners which can be found below the timelapse video.
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Today we are pleased to be able to offer you this interview with Mr. Ben Grammer of Grammer Vacuum Technologies of Post Falls, Idaho, USA. Ben, I have been rather excited about doing this interview with you as I have known you and your father for many years now, as a matter-of-fact Bob Grammer and I must go back over 20 years now.
Let’s start off talking about the general background of Grammer Vacuum Technologies, when it was founded, where you are located and the territory that you cover.
Yes, Gord, happy to. My dad, Bob Grammer, founded GVT in 1992. We are located near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho (pronounced Core Duh Lane), home to the world’s first and only floating golf green. Our territory is the Greater Northwestern USA, from the Golden Gate Bridge to British Columbia, and from the Pacific Coast to the plains of Colorado.
Because of my background I am very partial to family owned businesses in the heat treat industry. What is your background and what prompted you to take over from your father?
Ben what is your territory like? For instance, a heavy preponderance of captive heat treaters over commercials? Aerospace over automotive? A growing or stagnant heat-treating market?
A lot of aerospace, some medical, some general manufacturing. Lots of knife manufacturers. Not much automotive to speak of. Steady might be a better descriptor than growing, at least overall. We have seen for instance several commercial heat treat shops in Colorado shut down. That said, there is a steady demand for heat treating in the territory. Many aerospace companies have been slow since 2020, but that will turn around.
Over the years I have seen GVT slowly evolve, a process which has been very interesting to watch. However, lets start out with your origins as a manufacturer’s rep firm. Perhaps you could give us some background as to how a rep firm works for those of our readers who are not familiar with independent sales reps.
What companies do you rep for and what products do they have to offer? Feel free to give your “principals” a free plug.
We have developed strong relationships with suppliers who are the best at what they do. In reverse alphabetic order: For high performance, industrial, air and atmosphere, batch and continuous furnaces, we rep the engineering-heavy Williams Industrial Service. When you need control upgrades, analyzers, flow meters or data loggers, turn to the industry-leading Super Systems, Inc. If you need vacuum, then SECO/VACUUM is your choice, providing high pressure gas and oil quench furnaces with all the options. The industry-standard water-cooling system is found at Dry Coolers, Inc. For freezing and tempering in the same unit, see DMP CryoSystems. For cost-competitive alloy baskets, Cooley Wire Products provides standard or custom solutions.
I would like to ask for your opinion on reps in the heat treatment industry. For many years now suppliers to the heat treat industry (at least in North America) have relied upon independent sales reps to handle their sales efforts. It has been suggested by some that with advancements in information technologies and the isolations brought about by COVID that sales reps are in danger of becoming redundant-what is your opinion? To phrase it another way what does a sales rep bring to the table? Will “road warriors” continue to have a place in the industry?
Reps aren’t going away. Workers are hard to find these days, and reps are a knowledgeable sales force with territory-specific contacts. Web meetings are a great tool, but they aren’t the same as a firm handshake and laughter over a shared meal. Plus, reps pay their own benefits and expenses, and you only pay them when there is a sale.
Earlier I mentioned that I have seen GVT evolve over the years, what I am speaking about of course is that GVT has become a significant player in supplying molybdenum to the heat treatment sector. Please tell us how this came about.
What form does this take now? For instance, I know that you have a substantial stock of moly in Idaho-is this the main part of your moly business?
We do have a large, active inventory of mill products and grids. Inventory is a large part of the business, but we also often provide non-inventory items and finished parts. We provide a substantial number of custom and standard fixtures as well.
You mention that your custom fixtures and grids business is growing-where do the designs come from?
We do the design and assembly at our facility in Idaho.
On a final note I understand that your father and founder of the business, Bob Grammer is not as involved these days. How is he doing and what is he occupying his time with these days? I am sure many in the industry are curious as to what he is up to.
Dad keeps busy! And that has not changed as he has handed the business over to me. While he is still involved in the business, he has directed much of his energy to other areas, like starting troops for Trail Life USA (a Christian leadership and outdoor adventure program for boys) throughout the Pacific Northwest. He wears several hats in the organization and loves training the next generation of men. His “leisure” time is spent in Alaska dredging for gold on his claim, teaching shooting sports, or travelling with Mom to visit his 10 (and counting) grandkids.
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