A very interesting rumor and one which we believe to be true has to do with vacuum carburizing (low pressure carburizing) . We have been lead to believe that as early as this December, possibly January 2022 latest a very large vacuum carburizing furnace will be in service in the US. It’s a little too soon to mention the company by name but the rumor goes on to suggest that it would most likely be used for large gears. We are very confident that we will be able to confirm or deny this rumor in the fairly near future. Incidentally while it is very common to see VC units handling large volume automotive transmission gears they are not commonly seen in use for large gears.
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Welcome to the Super Systems Europe team based in Birmingham, UK. Global furnace controls company SSi is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA and has operations in Mexico, China and the UK-the UK team (SSE) is shown in this photo. Headed by Matt Cross the company has been offering sales, service and support to the European heat treatment industry for many years now. While SSE is in the UK the company has a far reaching team of direct sales people and independent reps covering all of Europe. During our visit the SSE team showed us incredible hospitality, in particular Mr. Robert Wilcox, Sales Manager who made us feel very much at home.
From Left to Right; Gord Montgomery Dani, Karina, Matt Cross, Martyn, Brett, Robert Wilcox
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Mr. Steve Cropper has had a long, distinguished career in the heat treatment industry in a variety of different sales positions. VP of Sales for furnace manufacturer, Can-Eng International of Niagara Falls, Canada, sales positions at Bodycote, salt supplier Park Thermal-Steve is an experienced guy. He just started a new position as Sales Manager at H & S Heat Treating in Port Robinson, Ontario. He will be replacing Mr. Mike Larson who recently retired.
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Firearm manufacturer Smith & Wesson joins a long line of firearm manufacturers moving from the gun “unfriendly” US North east to the gun “friendly” southeastern USA. This article very succinctly gives the reasons for the move, the same reasons which prompted other companies such as Remington Arms to also move. Below is a condensed version of the Smith & Wesson press release, the entire article can be found at Smith & Wesson to Relocate Headquarters to Tennessee | Smith & Wesson (smith-wesson.com)
Currently Smith & Wesson has an in house heat treatment department at their location in Springfield, Mass., which includes mesh belt furnace lines, batch, salt quenching and Fluidized bed furnaces.
“Mark Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer, said “This has been an extremely difficult and emotional decision for us, but after an exhaustive and thorough analysis, for the continued health and strength of our iconic company, we feel that we have been left with no other alternative.” He specifically cited legislation recently proposed in Massachusetts that, if enacted, would prohibit the company from manufacturing certain firearms in the state. “These bills would prevent Smith & Wesson from manufacturing firearms that are legal in almost every state in America and that are safely used by tens of millions of law-abiding citizens every day exercising their Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights, protecting themselves and their families, and enjoying the shooting sports. While we are hopeful that this arbitrary and damaging legislation will be defeated in this session, these products made up over 60% of our revenue last year, and the unfortunate likelihood that such restrictions would be raised again led to a review of the best path forward for Smith & Wesson.”
Smith indicated that the company vetted a number of cities and states and, after careful consideration, made the decision to relocate 750 jobs and its headquarters to Maryville, Tennessee. The key factors in the decision included the following:
- Support for the 2nd Amendment
- Business friendly environment
- Quality of life for employees
- Cost of living and affordability
- Access to higher education institutions
- Availability of qualified labor for its operations and headquarter functions
- Favorable location for efficiency of distribution
Smith continued, “The strong support we have received from the State of Tennessee and the entire leadership of Blount County throughout this process, combined with the quality of life, outdoor lifestyle, and low cost of living in the Greater Knoxville area has left no doubt that Tennessee is the ideal location for Smith & Wesson’s new headquarters. We would like to specifically thank Governor Lee for his decisive contributions and the entire state legislature for their unwavering support of the 2nd Amendment and for creating a welcoming, business friendly environment.”
Smith & Wesson will also close facilities in Connecticut and Missouri as part of consolidating in Tennessee. This process will result in the company reducing the number of locations it maintains from four to three and will significantly streamline its manufacturing and distribution operations.” Article continues at Smith & Wesson to Relocate Headquarters to Tennessee | Smith & Wesson (smith-wesson.com)
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Remember the June 2021 press release below from commercial heat treater Wallwork Heat Treatment in Bury, UK? Well part of “The Monty Heat Treat News” team had the chance to look at the furnace last week and we have these images.
“Wallwork Heat Treatment, UK Invests in Vacuum Carburizing Furnace. “To meet demand driven by a growing customer base of motor racing engine and transmission component suppliers, working across all Formulas including F1, Wallwork Heat Treatment have invested in a new advanced vacuum carburise furnace at their Greater Manchester site. This is a significant investment made during Covid challenges and brings the total number of vacuum furnaces across the group’s UK locations up to 29, with a total vacuum capacity to process over 40 tons of components per day.
Wallwork director, Simeon Collins, explains, “Motor racing is a punishing environment for metal components. These parts are expensive to manufacture and subject to immense forces. Speed is king but reliability is just as important. Component failure equals failure to finish and can be dangerous. The sector is characterised by rapid development cycles and relies upon equally experienced and responsive heat treatment services.”
In addition to hardening, precisely controlled heat treatment of components in the new vacuum carburise furnace will impart many improvements to the metal wear parts so they stand the stresses of continual high speed performance. In a typical process cycle, the metal surface will become free of oxide. This eliminates initial surface wear and enhances resistance to micro cracking which also increases fatigue resistance. Equally important to improving fatigue resistance, is the elimination of oxidation at a granular level, known as inter granular attack.
Many machined components will feature holes. Here the vacuum carburise furnace delivers excellent penetration by pulsing the gas pressure so fresh gas enters the holes frequently throughout the process cycle, ensuring more evenly applied heat treatment for the component.
Advanced machining methods make motor sport components to extremely fine tolerances. Any heat treatment process can cause component distortion, especially as the part is quenched (cooled), the new furnace excels at controlled cooling. As the process takes place in a vacuum chamber the component finish is excellent and takes less time due to the ability to apply higher carburising temperatures. Another time saving benefit is the elimination of the need for component post process cleaning.
Once the correct hardness profile for a metal part has been achieved, it can be stored and reproduced by the furnace to ensure future consistency and quality. Wallwork in-house experts can even help component designers at the design stage. Discussing with the heat treater what properties they need from their component can influence the design so the gains made at the heat treating stage are even greater.
Simeon concluded, “With a dedicated commercial pick-up and delivery fleet of over 50 vehicles, operating from five UK locations, we are ideally placed to provide a nationwide service to meet the rapid development cycles of the motor sport engineering sector. The affordability of the vacuum carburising process means it is not just for the big race teams. Self-funded privateers and smaller teams can also benefit from heat treating components and, if required, Wallwork can go a stage further and apply advance coatings for even greater part performance on track. The UK has a vibrant and world-envied position in engineering for motorsport and everyone wants winning reliability.”
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Bora, I appreciate the time you are spending with us, I have been fortunate enough to interview several individuals at both Ipsen, Rockford, USA and Kleve, Germany and have always enjoyed the discussions.
Lets start at the very beginning as they say, how did you end up where you are today-Technical Director of Ipsen, one of the largest global furnace suppliers?
I studied mechanical engineering and made my PhD while I was a research assistant at the chair of materials technology in Bochum, Germany. During this time, I was in charge of operating the universities’ vacuum furnace. My research work had a big heat treatment part in open fired furnaces with a polymer quench bath as I needed to find a heat treatment for my composite cast steel parts. I started my industry career in 2010 at one of the biggest furnace builders for the steel industry. I joined Ipsen in 2019 in the continuous furnace department. In January 2020, I was asked if I would like to take responsibility for the design department and the R&D department.
What does your position involve on a day to day basis? I can picture a Technical Director as being an innovator-somebody in a back room coming up with ever more advanced ideas-am I completely off the mark?
A furnace builder is not a research institute. We have much shorter innovation cycles. Furthermore, we have a lot of different disciplines that are all working together to build a reliable and safe machine. There is a lot of complexity in a modern furnace. The biggest challenge is to manage this complexity. It must be easy for us at Ipsen to offer a highly customized machine to our customers with only few efforts for our designers. You cannot do that from a back room.
Ipsen recently made a number of changes about where equipment is manufactured, my understanding is that the USA operation focuses on vacuum systems, while Germany has an emphasis on atmosphere. If that is the case does your position involve mainly atmosphere technology or a combination of both?
For new equipment mainly atmosphere in Germany. But of course, we do work together with our colleagues from USA every day. We should not forget to mention the daily cooperation we have with our colleagues from Ipsen India and Ipsen China. For service and aftermarket, the organization did not change. Therefore, we have several designers from both mechanical and electrical engineering who spend more than 90% of their daily work on vacuum aftermarket and revamping projects. To mention only one example, in April even though we had Covid restrictions, a German customer who ordered a replacement hot-zone for their vacuum furnace, visited us for two days. We developed improvements for their very special process together and at the same time could significantly improve the lifetime of some components with the feedback we got.
Lets talk about one of the hottest topics in the world these days, greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on the environment. In North America this has not been serious consideration, however there are some signs that this is changing. For instance several heat treaters in North America have told me recently that they are considering Nitrogen/Methanol systems as opposed to endothermic generators for the simple reason that there is no combustion in a Nitrogen/Methanol system hence less emissions. In Europe I know this is a topic which has been taken more seriously than North America for quite some time now. My question would be; “are your customers asking that greenhouse gas emissions be considered in the design of a furnace?”
It sounds interesting that nitrogen/methanol systems have no combustion. Methanol is a liquid that needs to be heated up, decomposed and then heated further to the process temperature. For transferring 10 litres/h methanol to a typical carburizing atmosphere you need approx. 18 kW of heating power as it is an endothermic reaction. You can see that effect if you inject the methanol/nitrogen too close to the furnace thermocouple. The difference compared to Endogas is, that the furnace burners provide the energy. So, there is combustion, but it takes place inside the furnace burners. However, “green” methanol is regarded as a main energy carrier of the future as it is easier to store than hydrogen.
Nearly all German customers ask for the efficiency of the burners. There is a subsidy program of the government where an investment into equipment that will save CO2 is rewarded with 500€ for each ton CO2 that you will save annually in the future. So the answer here is an emphatic yes! Customers are all talking about reducing their environmental footprint and Ipsen is ready with solutions.
This question is closely related to the one above and has to do with energy efficiency. Again the differences between North America and Europe are quite extreme due to the very high energy costs in Europe. I know this from experience because every time I visit Europe my hosts gently remind me to turn lights off when I leave a room. Is energy efficiency a prime consideration amongst your customers and what solutions does Ipsen have?
Yes it is. CO2 emissions are a big topic in Europe. The most important answer on what we have is: we do have the right furnace size. There is nothing more inefficient than having an empty furnace on temperature or every time loaded with too few parts. On the other hand, it is inefficient to divide a bigger batch into several batches because your furnace is too small. In bigger installations we have already delivered energy recovery systems to make use of waste gas and the heat of process gas flare. We will launch very interesting new products next year that exactly address these issues.
Lets talk Nitrogen Oxides (Nox values). Many jurisdictions around the world have tight regulations to control this form of air pollution and I would imagine to your customers this is a consideration which must be taken into account when considering new equipment. What does Ipsen have to offer?
The regulations in Germany will be tighter with the new “TA Luft” directive that is expected at the end of 2021. We will see how the NOx limits will be. Heat treatment furnaces with protective or reactive gas atmosphere are indirectly heated. So, the burner fires into a tube and the waste gas is not touching the heat treated part. For this kind of indirect heating, the new regulations seem to restrict NOx values to 1/3rd of the levels that are permitted today. This is a major change and Ipsen will be ready.
Lets switch gears a bit and talk about furnaces and furnace designs. Your customers obviously have many considerations that must think about when buying a new furnace but what is the number one thing they think about? Examples might include throughput or is flexibility more important? Do operating costs mean more than throughput? Perhaps emissions or is that a lower priority than making production? I realize it will generally be a combination of all of these factors and more but what are your customers really concerned about these days?
The heat treatment cost per kg is only half in a continuous pusher type furnace compared to a typical batch atmosphere furnace. A pusher therefore has a much better carbon footprint but is of course not as flexible. A CAPEX and OPEX calculation is essential to guide our customers to the right choice of equipment. The number one thing for the customer is safety. Nobody wants to see an accident, neither the operators nor the designers of the furnace.
Does anything ever change in the heat treat industry? I had a close friend who spent over 50 years of his life designing and selling furnaces and his contention was always the same-except for control changes and some relatively minor design changes carburizing was still carburizing, and through hardening was still through hardening. Cynical perhaps but I have always remembered his comments. Has furnace design changed dramatically in the past 30 or 40 years?
A retired colleague with 40 years of experience in furnace building used to tell the young engineers: “I already forgot more in my life than you have ever learned.” It is important not to forget what the more senior engineers could build. You are right, it is a well-established technology. In our daily life we have a lot of well-established products like bread, steel, and paper. The question is how to produce these essential goods today. In a digital world where the drawings are a 3D-model in a computer and the supply chain is organized digitally and globally. Of course, it needs to have the same or even better quality than in the old days.
To be fair you should mention low pressure carburizing that came later than carburizing in an equilibrium gas atmosphere. In some areas where carburizing in deep holes is necessary, LPC has a lot of advantages. But there are other areas with high throughput or more flexibility where there is a big demand for the classical sealed quench atmosphere furnaces.
We just spoke about where we have been-where are we going? Will sealed quench furnaces remain the most popular design of furnace in the world or do you see us going to single part processing as some have suggested?
CAPEX and OPEX are better when you collect more parts and treat them as a big batch. Therefore, emissions should in the most cases be also lower than in-line heat treatment. The cycle time of many hours in a carburizing furnace does not match the cycle time of some minutes of a machining line. For machine availability it is also difficult to connect too many manufacturing machines in a hard sequence.
Please tell us about your most challenging and most memorable project ever. I am not going to ask about customer specifics but what furnace project is the one which will stick in your memory the longest?
Ever? Then I need o be fair and mention a railway wheels project in my previous job. After two years of development of a heat treatment line, finally there was the day when the first high speed railway wheel was produced. With the computer model I developed to calculate the cooling media flow we were able to achieve the desired material properties in the first attempt. What I learned from that project, is something that most heat treaters know from their own experience: Cooling is more complex than heating.
To round things out I have a very personal question for you-what do you enjoy most about your job? Pushing the envelope as us North Americans would say-in other words doing what others have not done? Seeing a new technology successfully introduced? Modifying existing technology to be more efficient? What gets you really excited about your job?
Furnace building is one of the few jobs where mechanical engineering and materials science have the same importance. Both are really my passion for nearly 20 years. There is a difference between new technologies and inventions on the one hand and innovations on the other hand. Innovations are often to successfully do what others were trying without or with little success or maybe in the wrong application. My job is to create something useful. I have a very good team of engineers. Most of them with many years of experience and still there are meetings where all these experienced guys have learned something new from each other. There is no chance that furnace building will ever get boring.
Bora, I really appreciate the time and your very interesting thoughts. Gord Montgomery
Commercial heat treater Heat Treatment 2000, West Bomwich, UK, one of the last commercial, continuous heat treaters in the UK. More to come.
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Adrian Ordidge, Rob Wilcox (SSE), Paul Barber
Adrian Ordidge, Gord Montgomery, Paul Barber
Dan Herring, who is most well known as The Heat Treat Doctor®, has been in the industry for over 45 years. He spent the first 25 years in heat treating prior to launching The HERRING GROUP in 1995. His vast experience in the field includes materials science, engineering, metallurgy, equipment design, process and application specialist, and new product research. Dan holds a patent (as a co-inventor), and a broad range of industries are made better for his consulting services in heat treating and sintering, metallurgy, operations, business management, sales and marketing, and technology. In particular, The Heat Treat Doctor strongly believes open sharing of knowledge and discoveries in the field will improve the industry: he holds a position as an associate research professor with the Thermal Processing Technology Center (Illinois Institute of Technology), has written four books and nearly 500 technical articles, and lectures frequently at conferences and workshops worldwide.
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L&L Special Furnace Co., Inc. has shipped a second bench-mounted box furnace to a worldwide leading manufacturer of high-purity fused silica and high-end ceramic products. These materials are used in the semiconductor and photonics industry as well as many other ceramic and composite industries worldwide. The furnaces are part of the research and development department and are an important component of the testing and quality control department.
The Model GS1714 has internal dimensions of 17” wide by 12” high by 14-1/2” deep. It has an operating voltage of 208, 220, 240 volts single phase, 60 or 50 hertz. Included is a spring-assist vertical lift door that allows for effortless loading and unloading, even at high temperatures. The furnace is equipped with a Bartlett program control and overtemp with an option for a Eurotherm 1/16 DIN microprocessor-based program control with solid-state relays. This allows for adjustable PID logic and finer temperature control around setpoint.
The furnace is constructed from 3” lightweight IFB firebrick, backed up with 2” of board insulation. The elements are supported in hard ceramic element holders. This allows for long element life and they are easily replaced. The elements are located on both sides as well as the top and bottom. This allows for equal heat distribution from all sides, and with the industrial control option, has proven to achieve a uniformity gradient of ±7.5°F.
Standard units include a sheathed thermocouple, a slot in the door for access into the furnace, a bench-mounted, powder-coated CNC machined case, ceramic hearth plate with standoffs, a door limit switch that turns the power to the elements off if the door is opened, an on/off toggle switch with control fusing, and a power plug. An optional angle iron stand and vent kit are available.
The furnace is shipped by common carrier on a skidded carton with foam-in-place packaging. L&L has standard units in stock available for same-day shipment. Units with control upgrade or fan option usually ship within one to two weeks. L&L currently has over 500 units in service. This makes the L&L GS1714 a great choice for general-purpose heat treating as well as high tech industrial applications.
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It is with great regret that we mention the very recent passing of Mr. Peter Jones in Ontario, Canada-an individual who many considered “The Godfather” of automotive vacuum carburizing. Peter was originally from the UK but moved to Canada where he worked with automotive parts supplier Stackpole for many years. While he was certainly not the inventor of vacuum carburizing (low pressure carburizing) he was one of the first to embrace it whole heartedly in the auto industry. The end result was that for many years Stackpole had the largest vacuum carburizing department in the world. In conjunction with others at Stackpole he was awarded several patents for his work on heat treatment of automotive transmission components. The loss of his tremendous experience is indeed a loss to the entire industry.