Enjoy your US Thanksgiving! We will be resuming regular updates Friday November 26th.
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Over the past year “The Monty Heat Treat News” in conjunction with “The Heat Treat Podcast” has presented a number of very in depth podcasts with some of the most knowledgeable and interesting individuals in the global heat treatment industry. Based upon readers responses we have selected some of the most popular podcasts we’ve published. These experts in various fields of heat treating spoke about subjects such as; The Future of Heat Treatment, Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP), Vacuum Atmosphere, Austempering Process, The Business of Heat Treating and CQI-9 & NADCAP.
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“Xtrac is the World’s leading supplier of high performance transmissions for top level professional Motorsport and High Performance Automotive applications. Headquartered in the UK in Thatcham, Berkshire and with additional operations in the USA in Mooresville, North Carolina and Indianapolis, Indiana. Xtrac designs, manufactures and assembles all of their transmissions in-house using the very latest design and analysis tools, and state of the art machining, assembly and test equipment. Xtrac – Transmission Technology Specialists” The firm is so successful at what it does that not only has it been a leading supplier on the F1 circuit, it recently announced that it is the sole gearbox and driveline supplier for NASCAR’s 2022 next gen cup car-a very impressive feat, with 300 transmission assemblies being supplied before the start of the season at Daytona in February 2022.
With this background we looked forward to visiting the company recently at their headquarters in Thatcham, UK and seeing their heat treat facility, the visit took place just a few weeks ago and provided a glimpse into the future and that future is vacuum carburizing. The medium sized heat treat department consists of the industry standard for heat treating gears, batch IQ furnaces and the future in the form of Ipsen vacuum carburizing systems. In recent years, Xtrac have made a significant investment into low pressure carburising, with all of their high performance automotive components being processed this way along with the majority of the high level motorsport product. Combined with this technology was a very elaborate state of the art cleaning system. All in all quite an impressive facility. Combined with this technology was a very elaborate state of the art cleaning system. All in all quite an impressive facility. We have two photos to share with you today, in the first we see from the left Aaron Long, VAS, John Bass-Archerm, Xtrac and Gord Montgomery. In the second we see from the left Greg Walker, VAS, John Bass-Archerm and Gord Montgomery
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“I’m looking forward to working closely with John on enhancing Ipsen’s technical service offerings for customers. By providing both world-class equipment and critical aftermarket support, our customers can expect to outperform and outlast their competition,” said Patrick McKenna, Ipsen USA President & CEO. Dykstra earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin Green Bay in Organizational Communication, a Master of Science in Organizational Leadership & Quality from Marian University, and a Master of Business Administration from St. Norbert College. He also served for eight years in the U.S. Army. Outside of work, Dykstra is an avid outdoorsman with a passion for hunting, fishing and the Green Bay Packers. He also enjoys traveling the world and looks forward to adding more countries to his list.
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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 47th spot we have Pinson Valley Heat Treat, Pinson, Alabama.
Pinson Valley is owned and run by the Hendry family and is now in its third generation. Founded in 1970 the company has a very unique mix of capabilities including vacuum heat treating, atmosphere and some very interesting and unique tip up style furnaces.
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Located in Grenoble, France BMI is part of the HTC Group which includes IVA Schmetz (Germany), Mahler (Germany), Fours Industriels B.M.I. (France) and IVA Schmetz Industrial Furnaces (China). All four companies specialize in advanced technologies for heat-treatment processes for components. If you recall the group was sold by the previous owners, “Tenova” back in 2019 to a Chinese company Qizhi GmbH and Shanghai Qizhi Information Technologies Co. Ltd., both members of Ningbo Qijing Holding Co. Ltd. BMI offers a wide range of vacuum furnaces which includes a very specialized offering, vertical oil quenching furnaces. In this photo you see one of 3 being constructed by the company, all of which are scheduled to be delivered in 2022.
The gentleman in front of the furnace is Mr. Erdogan Biyikli, General Manager of Edel Metal company who since 2004 have been the HTC repos in turkey. As HTC now has more than 70 furnaces installed in Turkey we can safely assume that this has been a long and mutually beneficial partnership.
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Back in 2015, Mr. Paul Dobson and Mr. Wade Maloney two individuals with many years of vacuum furnace experience joined forces to form the IVAC Group in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. The aim of the company was to be able to offer “full service” to firms operating vacuum furnaces-this included building and repairing hot zones, offering new or updated control systems, vacuum pump rebuilding, installing and starting up furnaces-in short Paul and Wade wanted to have a firm which could handle every aspect of running a vacuum furnace. 6 years later IVAC has achieved all of these goals and now has a total of 9 employees.
In 2018 Remus Bica joined the company in the position of Electrical Engineering Manager and a year ago he started the company’s ISO 17025 certified calibration department which includes TUS surveys. The formula appears to be working as IVAC has been growing at over 20% a year for a number of years and now has an international presence having completed projects in a number of countries around the world. In this photo you see part of the team, from the left we have; Remus Bica, Jashan Kaur, Wade Maloney, Paul and Kingsley Dobson and Jordan Montgomery of “The Monty Heat Treat News”.
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To date greenhouse gas emissions have not been an issue with North American heat treaters meaning they are not something which heat treaters have had to consider, however with current global sentiment about global climate change it would appear that this is something which heat treaters might be forced to take into account.
Recently we have had 3 captive heat treaters ask “The Monty Heat Treat News” for costing on converting their natural gas fired batch IQ furnaces to electric heat. While the idea of switching from relatively inexpensive natural gas to the more expensive option of electricity appears to be ludicrous to us, in each case the answer was the same-management at each company had dictated that all avenues to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must at least be considered-(incidentally at least 2 furnace builders confided to us that they feel electric heating will become the norm rather than the exception in the coming years for exactly this reason). We will qualify our statement saying gas is cheaper than electricity by adding that in North American most atmosphere furnaces are heated with natural gas because of cost, however regions such as the US Northwest, Tennessee and Quebec, Canada are the reverse because in these regions electricity is the cheaper option.
Another option which has been suggested to us several times over the past few months is heating with hydrogen, a much cleaner gas than natural gas. While we are not aware of any heat treating furnaces in North America being heated with hydrogen it would appear that the technology is advancing as can be seen in the article below. Whether you agree with concerns over emissions or disagree is probably a mute point, it would certainly appear that this consideration will be popping up more and more often and will influence future debates over how furnaces are heated.
“(This entire article can be found at https://emcombustion.es/en/em-
As one of the main protagonists of the energy transition, burners that use hydrogen represent an evolution of traditional combustion systems and allow us to achieve superior energy efficiency with a combustion that eliminates all C02 emissions into the atmosphere. When used together with other fuels, such as natural gas (mixed or multi-fuel burners), it considerably reduces the emission of these greenhouse gases.
District heating and industry decarbonization
Thus, the recently presented prototype hydrogen burner is designed to work only with hydrogen or to operate with a mixture of hydrogen and natural gas for use in district heating installations, for heating buildings and large areas. This last alternative of a mixture of hydrogen and gas is tested by E&M Combustion and is very viable. It consists of a mixture of hydrogen, with 15% -20% natural gas, with which the enriched mixture increases the calorific value and achieves a more stable and efficient combustion. This mixture also makes it possible to improve flame detection, a great challenge with the exclusive use of hydrogen as fuel, due to its characteristics of invisibility to the human eye.
In the hydrogen sector, Spanish engineering company E&M Combustión contributes its technology and experience in the field of industrial combustion and in hydrogen combustion systems, specifically, to which it provides advice, design, manufacture and commissioning of Hydrogen Burners and Hydrogen Combustion Systems in power generation plants and industrial processes, especially in the chemical and petrochemical areas.
The use of hydrogen in industry provides new tools to eliminate CO2, which is largely responsible for climate change. For Iñigo Béjar, CEO of the company “this milestone is a great opportunity for the planet as a whole, and for the improvement of production processes, although it requires the accompaniment of a technological partner and specialized attention to combustion challenges that this new fuel brings with it “.
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This week “The Monty Heat Treat News” explores the heat treatment industry in Portugal. Visits will include these two top notch facilities both of which focus on the booming tool and die industry in the country.
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Industry Heating Equipment Association (IHEA) always does a very good job of summarizing the business climate in North America, this is their October 2021 report; (the full report can be found at IHEA Executive Summary October 2021.pdf)
“October 2021 There is not a lot of good news to focus on these days. Or is there? The headlines have been blaring with all manner of dire warnings and as is usually the case there is far more hype than reality. The three headline issues are obvious enough – inflation at levels not seen since the 1990s, a supply chain that has been near collapse and a severe labor shortage. The fact is that all of these are related and highly predictable once one wades through the hysteria. Let’s start with inflation.
There have been those that are trumpeting idiocies such as claiming imminent hyperinflation or stagflation. These assertions are foolish in the extreme and only serve to obscure the real situation. Hyperinflation is inflation of over 50% per month – not the current rate of 5.0% per year. The hyperinflated economy is in utter collapse and one where money has no value whatsoever. Stagflation is a combination of very high unemployment and high inflation. We have inflation at 5.0% to perhaps 6.0% and a jobless rate of 4.6%. We have neither of these to deal with – we have good old-fashioned inflation driven by the three factors that always drive inflation and this situation presents challenges enough without introducing extremes.
The prime driver for higher prices is a surge in demand for these goods. Coming out of the pandemic there was a surge in demand that nobody was prepared for. The supply chain crisis was a matter of overwhelming a system that had been nearly shut down the previous year. The commodities prices soared and so did everything else connected to them. The good news is that supply driven inflation is short lived as demand fades and supply catches up – in part because of the higher prices. The second driver of inflation is a bit more worrisome as it is based on labor costs. Once these wages go up, they do not come back down easily. The pressure to hike wages to get the labor needed is driving the cost of even unskilled labor up. The final driver is the only one the Fed can react to – money supply. There is simply too much money in the system and that has prevented inflation from doing its job. Usually, the rise in price will serve as a discouragement – people will stop buying as they either can’t or refuse to. They are complaining about the higher prices but they have money and decide to buy anyway. The Fed will try to dry up the surplus that accumulated during the pandemic (over $7 trillion in excess savings worldwide) with higher interest rates, adjusted reserve ratios and other tools.
All this inflation and the supply chain chaos is a bad thing – right? Of course, to an extent that is certainly true as everybody is confronting the higher prices and the shortage of just about everything, but if one considers the reasons we are dealing with this there is most definitely a silver lining to this dark cloud. These are problems of growth. The US economy was barreling along at a 9.5% pace for the early part of Q2 in 2021. That pace slowed to 6.5% by the end of that quarter but that is still over twice as fast as the US economy traditionally grows (around 2.5% per year). These shortages and the congestion are because there has been extraordinary demand – not an actual shortage that can’t be addressed. The producers will catch up and likely within the next six months and that is when the prices start to fall again.
The one issue to be confronted by the producers is the stability of that demand. They are well aware that consumers are rushing to get back to their old habits but they are also aware that these consumers are operating with a lot of that stimulus cash and will not have the same kind of access next year. The oil producers are aware that demand is driving prices up but that demand is very fragile. The gas shortage in Europe is artificial and could vanish overnight. The real demand for oil comes from the US commuter and they have not resumed that pattern as yet. The consumer product demand is based on consumers who still lack access to their former service sector options. The metal producers are not sure when auto production ramps up. You get the drift – lots of unanswered questions that will determine just how aggressive these suppliers will want to be in the coming year.
New Automobile & Light Truck Sales
This story is getting very old and frustrating for just about every sector of the automotive industry. The carmakers are still stalled by the shortage of computer chips and that stalls the tier one, two and three suppliers as well as the car dealers and of course the car buyers. Sales have fallen every month and will continue to tumble until the shortages are alleviated and right now it is anybody’s guess as to when that will be. The major producers of these chips are in full production mode but the capacity is just not there. It is not just the carmakers that need these chips, the entire electronics industry has been seeing stepped up demand and that has simply overwhelmed the ability of the producers. There are other threats emerging through all this. The global vulnerability when it comes to chips has not escaped the notice of the Chinese government. They are well aware that Taiwan remains the largest producer of these chips and the threats that have been directed at the ROC are pointed. China is fully capable of destroying Taiwanese capability in a matter of minutes. The US is now actively trying to lure production back to the US but this is not a simple or swift process.”
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