Century Sun Metal Treating in Traverse City, Michigan, USA just appointed Mr. Bryan Jageman  as Heat Treat Sales Manager. Byran has had a long and very distinguished career in the heat treatment industry having worked with companies as diverse as Jasco Heat Treating in NY, Modern Industries in Erie, PA and most recently as VP of Operations at HI TecMetal Group in Cleveland, Ohio. 
 
Century is a very impressive commercial heat treat operation which has made “The Monty Heat Treat News” several times recently, both as one of the largest commercial heat treats in North America and also because ownership of the company changed hands earlier this year. Read all about it below;
 

Top 50 Heat Treater Sold; Century Sun Heat Treat Treat Sold-31st Largest Commercial Heat Treater in North America

Recently “The Monty Heat Treat News” put together our annual list of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America-in 31st position on this list is Century Sun Heat Treat in Traverse City, Michigan. According to this press release the firm was recently sold to a Michigan based Investment Group. 50 Largest North American Commercial Heat Treats 2021 | The Monty

“PMCF is pleased to announce that it served as the exclusive financial advisor to Century, LLC (“Century” or “The Company”) in a sale transaction to Hillcrest Investment Partners, LLC, a private investment group. Headquartered in Traverse City, Michigan, Century is a leading supplier of heat treating and machining solutions.

 
Over its history of more than 45 years, Century has evolved into a leading manufacturer of highly complex precision components, serving customers in aerospace, oil and gas, and industrial markets. The Company’s vertically integrated offering of precision machining capabilities, automated welding, and specialized heat treating services streamlines the supply chain and improves quality and turnaround times for customers.  Century’s team of experienced engineers, machinists, and product line specialists take a methodical and comprehensive approach to each project. The Company’s focus on service, quality, and on-time delivery results in strong customer loyalty – 90% of customers have been with Century for 15 years or more.
 
Bill Janis, former Owner and Chairman of Century, remarked, “Century has established a strong reputation in the market over multiple decades based on our focus and dedication to customer satisfaction. The Company has found a great home with Hillcrest Investment Partners. Their ability to leverage industry experience and continued investment in capabilities and technology will accelerate Century’s growth trajectory and result in even better service for our customers.”
 
Century selected PMCF to serve as the exclusive investment banker in the transaction. Bill Janis added, “We couldn’t be happier with our decision to hire PMCF as our M&A advisor. The team was instrumental in achieving a successful outcome and was heavily involved in each phase of the process. PMCF’s industry expertise and ability to effectively communicate our story to the market was impressive, and I would highly recommend PMCF to any company considering a transaction.” The transaction closed in June 2021. Honigman LLP served as the legal advisor to the Company.”
 
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ELVIAL S.A., one of the largest aluminum extrusion companies in Greece, has purchased a second NX-815 E furnace from NITREX to meet the needs created by its plant expansion and increase its manufacturing capacity. “This additional NX-815 E furnace, which was installed and began production in July 2021, will help increase the production of building materials by the company – says Marcin Stokłosa, Project Manager at Nitrex. The first furnace has been operational since 2016”.  An ELVIAL representative cited good equipment, technology and service to explain why ELVIAL chose to do business with NITREX once again, according to Marcin Stokłosa.

The NX-815 E is a retort furnace used for extrusion. It operates with NX Connect software, and uses the NITREG®-C (nitrocarburizing) and NITREG® (gas nitriding) technologies for dies extrusion. The machine is equipped with air conditioning, an INS series exhaust gas neutralizer, and racking of 750 kg made from Inconel 600. The order also included a lifting device. All processes for this furnace are compliant to AMS 2759/10.

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We at “The Monty Heat Treat News” have always found it fascinating to see the start up of a commercial heat treater and how it grows, changes and evolves over the years, this is the story of a fairly typical North American commercial heat treat, Cambridge Heat Treating. We say typical because like many in the industry it is family owned and run and in terms of sales it would be considered average or slightly above average by North American standards. The original founder was Bob Robbins and over the years his sons Don, Peter and daughter Cheryl have all had a role in the business. This is the timeline of the business combined with photos showing the history.

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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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Ipsen announced the hiring of John Dykstra as Chief Service Officer (CSO), an executive-level addition to the furnace manufacturer’s U.S. Leadership Team. Dykstra comes to Ipsen from Key Technologies, where he served as Director, Service Operations  Americas & Asia Pacific. Prior, he worked for Kohler Power Systems and Oshkosh Defense, where he held positions of increasing responsibility leading aftermarket teams. In this newly created role, Dykstra is responsible for the growth of all North American Ipsen Customer Service business, which includes engineered retrofits, spare parts and technical service. Dykstra’s professional background and track record of accelerating organic revenue growth while also increasing customer satisfaction make him an ideal fit for the role.

“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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