There can be nothing more devastating to a heat treater than a fire-unfortunately it is a not uncommon occurrence. These photos which were taken just yesterday show Elk County Heat Treaters in St. Marys, PA, USA. It is too soon to know what caused the fire however luckily there were no injuries. Elk county is a well established, medium size commercial heat treater. It is located in the city of St. Marys which is the powdered metal capital of the world and because of this the area has a very substantial amount of heat treating in relationship to the size of the area.
It is with great regret that we mention the passing of long time heat treater Alonzo Lozano of Accurate Steel Treating in Southgate, California. On a personal note we can say that we had some business dealings with Alonzo and we always found him to be a pleasure to work with. Accurate Steel Treating is one of the largest commercial heat treaters on the US west coast.
Alonzo Lozano January 12, 1958 – July 15, 2020
“On July 15, 2020 at 4:50pm our beloved Alonzo Lozano was called home to rest at the young age of 62. He was known as Alonzo, Al, Dad, but his greatest pride was being called Grampa. Alonzo was happily married for 43 years to his first love, Karen Lozano. Not one day went by that Alonzo did not put Karen’s happiness before his. If Karen was happy, Alonzo was happy. With this union, Alonzo and Karen were blessed with two beautiful daughters, Marisela and Yolanda. They were truly the joy of their dad’s life. Alonzo was a selfless man. Never was there a time that his family did not come first. He would put everyone’s needs before his own. Alonzo was, and still is, the definition of a true family man. If we have learned anything from Alonzo, we have learned how to love unconditionally. He was truly a friend to all who was blessed to be in his presence. Alonzo lived a life full of love, happiness, many friendships, and remarkable adventures. To have known him is to have loved him.
Alonzo was not only dedicated to his family he was also dedicated to his work. Alonzo worked at Accurate Steel Treating for 41 years. This was not just a job to him. He poured his heart and soul into his daily work and many of his coworkers became his second family. Alonzo is survived by his lovely wife, Karen Lozano, Marisela Lozano (daughter), Yolanda Lozano (daughter), JaRod Jones (grandson), Jace Lozano (grandson), Afra Jones (sister), Julio Estrada (brother), and Lucila Peters (mother). Alonzo is also survived by a host of cousins, nieces, nephews, other relatives, and close friends. Alonzo was loved by so many and will continue to be loved through eternity. His memory will be kept alive by the way we continue to show love to each other.”
In Tiffin, Ohio, USA we find Webster Industries, a 140 year old, employee owned manufacturer of chain. Webster makes our news section today due to the fact that they just announced several million dollars worth of investments in the facility-this includes automated loading systems for their in house heat treat department. Just last year we visited this facility and what we saw in their heat treat department were a few batch IQ furnaces, some continuous lines and endo generators. While we were not allowed to take any pictures in the facility we did get this one of the individuals responsible for heat treating. On the left we see Mark Kuenzli, Operations Manager, Craig Agerter, Heat Treat Department and Gord Montgomery on the right.
Will Rassieur of Paulo, the second largest commercial heat treater in North America (https://themonty.com/project/
“A case-hardening technique in use since the early 20th century, nitriding steel has been an effective lower-temperature heat treatment for work pieces longer than engineers and metallurgists fully understood it. Its appeal lies in the ability to harden a part by dissolving nitrogen into its surface without austenitizing, thus all but eliminating the risk of distortion. That opened the door for improving an ever-widening variety of parts. Its popularity grows as engineers realize the technique is effective across a broad variety of parts and industries.
Origin of nitriding steel; Metallurgist Adolph Machlet developed nitriding by accident in 1906. That year, he applied for a patent that called for replacing atmosphere air in a furnace with ammonia to avoid oxidation of steel parts. Shortly after he sent the patent application off, he noticed that treating parts in an ammonia atmosphere at elevated temperatures caused a “skin, casing, shell or coating” to develop around a piece that was extremely difficult to corrode or tarnish. Also in 1906, German metallurgist Adolph Fry led a research program during which he made the same discoveries Machlet made. He also noticed that adding alloying elements to iron heavily influenced the results of nitriding. Machlet’s patents for nitriding in the U.S. were approved in 1913 and 1914; Fry received patents in Germany for his process in 1924.
How it works; The process of nitriding steel begins by heating parts in a furnace to a relatively low temperature (between 950 and 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on a part’s intended use) compared to other heat treatment methods. At these low temperatures, the iron remains ferritic-phase changes that alter the structure of the iron do not occur. But the temperature is high enough for ammonia molecules injected into the furnace to break apart once they contact the workpiece. That breakup releases nitrogen atoms, which are soluble in iron. A compound layer of nitrogen and iron forms at the part’s surface, creating the case that improves a part’s hardness and toughness.
One benefit of nitriding steel as opposed to using other heat treatments is that modern nitriding equipment allows for the precise injection of ammonia to achieve varying case depths. Another is that parts are free cooled rather than cooled rapidly via quenching, a process that further limits the risk of distortion. The precision of the process is such that parts’ intended qualities are achieved in a single step; they do not need to be softened down to specifications via tempering.
Increasing popularity; Because nitriding steel workpieces offers superior surface qualities with minimal risk of distortion, the process has become a mainstay treatment of parts across a variety of industries:
Manufacturers of automotive parts choose to nitride gears, crankshafts and valve parts because the process imparts hard diffusion layers to the part surface. The increased fatigue strength resists the formation of surface and subsurface cracks. Nitriding has become an attractive heat treatment option for makers of tool steels and forging dies because it imparts critical surface hardness without the risk of distortion that accompanies higher-temperature treatments.
Makers of firearms nitride components such as gun barrels and slides because the process decreases friction coefficients, increases wear resistance and fatigue strength and imparts moderate corrosion control.
With certified expertise that’s backed by computerized process control capabilities we built in-house, Paulo guarantees quality heat treatment of your parts, no matter the industry or application. If you want to know more about the benefits of nitriding and why it might be the best heat treatment for your parts, contact us. Our metallurgists will gladly answer your questions.” https://www.paulo.com
At least for the time being COVID-19 has altered the world and our industry in terms that are still hard to grasp, and this includes used furnace sales. A rough rule of thumb would be that any used furnace with an asking price of over $20,000 USD warrants an in person inspection, which means driving or flying. With current travel restrictions many times an actual visit has become an impossibility which has lead to “virtual inspections”-an example is in order. Recently “The Monty” had listed a “like new” vacuum furnace with an asking price of $300,000 USD. Like new yes, but still a used piece of equipment. A potential buyer surfaced but for obvious reasons did not feel comfortable taking a 4 hour flight to look at the furnace in person. The solution was that the vendor offered a virtual inspection of the furnace which was basically a live stream video of the furnace with the potential buyer requesting different camera angles. The buyer was satisfied, the deal was done and last we heard both buyer and seller were very happy with the outcome. Since that time “The Monty” has sold several other items by means of virtual inspections and to date each transaction has been successful for all parties involved. Whether this will become a long term trend remains to be seen but at least for the present virtual inspections appear to be a viable alternative to an in person visit.
Recently in passing we spoke about a pit carburizing furnace located at a commercial heat treater in Germany by the name of REESE which is the largest we have ever seen. In response a fellow from gear manufacturer David Brown in Santasalo, UK sent us these photos of their captive heat treat department. With the ability to carburize gears up to 3 meters in diameter (9′), 3 meters high and with a weight capacity of 18 tons it is an enormous furnace, however still smaller than the one at REESE.
“SECO/WARWICK will deliver its flagship CAB line to a global manufacturer of cooling systems for electric car batteries. This is another SECO/WARWICK for an Asian client, their second CAB technology, and the first for their battery cooling systems. The system will be designed for soldering large size car battery coolers. Car batteries are currently the most active product line developing in the automotive industry. It is estimated that by 2025 the market of electric vehicles will be worth about 84 billion dollars. Controlled Atmosphere Brazing (CAB) technology has been the basic production method for most heat exchangers for passenger cars and other vehicles for several decades. SECO/WARWICK is a leading global manufacturer of CAB production lines. The current and forecast development of electric cars and the related rapid and long-term increase in demand for battery coolers is very positive for the segment of the company dealing in aluminum soldering and heat treatment.”
For the week starting Monday July 20th, we have some very interesting heat treat news items for you starting with a news item about Nitrex in Aurora, Illinois, USA installing a new ECM vacuum carburizing system; “Jason Orosz, President of Nitrex Heat Treating Services, announced a new plant investment aimed at expanding the Aurora, Illinois commercial heat treat facility located just west of Chicago. The production expansion will add a fourth building on the property to house a new low-pressure carburizing (LPC) system and secondary heat-treating equipment.
The new ECM vacuum carburizing furnace with oil quench capabilities will help meet growing demand from makers of high-end critical parts within the automotive, aerospace, and tooling industries. The 20-bar dual-chamber furnace has a workload size of 40″ L x 24″ W x 28″ H (1000 x 600 x 715 mm) and a load capacity of 1500 lbs. (680 kg).
Nitrex will break ground on the new building on July 20, which will connect to an existing structure, Building 3. According to Bill Walter, Facility Manager of Nitrex Aurora, the construction project will be completed in January 2021, and production on the LPC furnace is expected to begin in April 2021. The expansion will increase the production footprint by 11,000 square feet, a pre-requisite to support current demand as well as future growth. Once this building is completed, the total floor space will be over 50,000 square feet. Nitrex first put down its roots in Aurora, Illinois in 2000, after acquiring Alliance Metal Treating from owner Tom Cooper, who stayed on following the acquisition to run operations and to help position the company for future growth. Initially, the plant offered heat treating processes focusing on annealing, carburizing, carbonitriding, neutral hardening, and normalizing.” In the photo below we have; Tom Cooper (Vice President of Business Development), Bill Walter (Facility Manager), and Raja Gumber (Senior Account Manager).
Now this is a real cool press release from Accurate Brazing in Greenville, SC, USA. “Accurate Brazing proudly announces and welcomes Jennifer McPeek to the newly created position of Southeast Regional Sales Manager. McPeek will focus on sales and marketing for Brazing, Heat-treating, and HIP’ing customers in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. “We are very excited to have Jennifer join Accurate Brazing. She has a proven track record developing customer relationships and generating sales growth. She will be a vital part of Accurate Brazing’s Sales & Marketing strategy and growth into markets for not only our Brazing and Vacuum Heat-treating services, but also our HIP’ing capabilities,” said Brent Davis, Vice President of Accurate Brazing.
Jennifer joins Accurate Brazing with more than 30 years of experience in the Brazing and Heat-treat industry, working with customers across the Aerospace, Automotive, and General Industry sectors, and brings with her extensive connections throughout the US. Jennifer can be reached directly at [email protected] or 561.225.3458. Accurate Brazing, a subsidiary of Aalberts N.V., is a full-service, one-stop shop for Vacuum Brazing, Heat-treating, and HIP’ing with over thirty years in the business and tailored primarily to support the Aerospace, Additive, and Power Generation markets. Accurate Brazing has facilities located in South Carolina, Connecticut, and New Hampshire.”
The seriousness of COVID-19 really hit home last week with the passing of a 61 year old commercial heat treater in California due to COVID-19 complications. This is the first time we have run across a death in the heat treating industry directly related to this virus. Mark Hemsath of furnace builder SECO/WARWICK was recently promoted to VP Super IQ® and Nitriding Technologies. We congratulate Mark, he is a good man who knows his stuff. Where are they now-Steven Sumner. Steven is another individual who has spent a great deal of his working life in the heat treating industry in North America. For a number of years he was with Applied Process in Livonia, Michigan ending up with the title of Vice President (for more information about Applied Process we would suggest our list of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America, Applied Process and their parent company are in the 7th position https://themonty.com/articles/largest-north-american-commercial-heat-treats-august-2020/ ). Steven is now Vice President of Tri-City Heat Treat in Rock Island, IL. We have this photo of part of the Tri City team which we took a couple of years back during a visit.
ED Industries in MO, USA did something relatively unusual recently, they went from absolutely no in house heat treating to a state of the art heat treatment department. The company makes high end automotive components and very recently they installed a heat treat area all revolving around vacuum furnaces. In Italy we see that a company by the name of Lincotek Additive has just installed a new vacuum furnace; “Lincotek Additive has installed a high-vacuum furnace and a validated heat treatment process specifically designed for 3D printed titanium parts in its Trento, Italy Additive Production Center. The company says the installations complete its state-of-the-art additive manufacturing medical device facility, helping to triple its capacity for thermal treatment at its Northern Italy site. Lincotek has been using additive manufacturing since 2006, with more than 500,000 parts produced in that time and processes following the ISO 13485 quality management standard. To continue providing high-quality additive services, the company has enhanced its heat treatment capabilities to deal with reactive materials like titanium, while also adding a range of instruments ‘essential for understanding and mastering AM powder metallurgy.”
Remember the press release from SECO WARWICK back in early June about Youngstown Tool & Die buying a couple of vacuum furnaces? Well in case you don’t here is the original press release and we now have a photo of the first furnace rolling in the door. Youngstown is located in Youngstown, Ohio, USA. “Increased capabilities. Increased throughput. Increased customer quality. These are the attributes behind Youngstown Tools & Die’s decision to upgrade their existing atmosphere heat treatment capabilities to new high-pressure gas quench (HPGQ) vacuum furnaces from SECO/VACUUM, a SECO/WARWICK Group company. It’s all part of the company’s big upgrade and expansion plans. Youngstown specializes in manufacturing aluminum extrusion dies since 1961 and because of demand, is moving into a larger facility in their Ohio community to accommodate increased production needs. One of the 2 Vector furnaces ordered in January was made available as part of SVT’s VIP program for fast delivery, while the other is scheduled to ship later in the year.”
To round things out for this week we have this photo from VAS (Vacuum & Atmosphere Services) in the UK. VAS is the Ipsen rep in the UK and also probably the largest supplier of heat treating services and products in the company. “The Monty” had been scheduled to spend some time with the company this fall but due to COVID-19 this visit will have to take place another time. VAS is celebrating their 20th year in business and we have this photo of the shop as it now looks. To compliment this picture we have another one which we took back in 2013 when we visited the company.
Each month IHEA (Industrial Heating Equipment Association) issues an economic report about the state of the industry in North America. It makes for interesting reading and for June the focus is on the economy and how COVID-19 has effected it. Please note that this is a condensed version of the report and does not include graphs that came with the original article.
“It may not be time to start dancing in the streets but the news this month is certainly a stark contrast from what it was last month. Of the eleven indicators we watch there were nine trending in a positive direction and not by a narrow margin. This was robust growth and significant gains. Before one gets overly excited, it has to be pointed out that the readings are still far worse than they were before the whole lockdown mess started. But the fact that a reversal has begun promises some continued expansion. That is the assumption at least. There are provisos that need to be acknowledged as the economy remains in uncharted territory. As has been pointed out repeatedly this is not a normal recession by any stretch of the imagination. It was essentially a manufactured event – a forced shutdown of the entire global economy as a last ditch effort to deal with a pandemic that absolutely nobody was prepared for. The stark fact is that governments are no better prepared now than they were before and there are no other options available despite nearly four months of this outbreak. If the determination is made that the virus is spreading too fast again, that it is straining the medical community again, that it is sickening and killing too many people; the decision will be made to impose another lock down and whatever gains have been made in terms of economic recovery will vanish again.
It is not all that instructive to go through all ten of the positive indicators in this summary, the details are contained in the sector write-ups. There is a common theme as far as these rebounds are concerned and that is worth examining. It is also important to look at the two indicators that did not show recovery as this outlines the challenges that still lie ahead. The common theme is fairly obvious. The lockdown was lifted and business was allowed to resume. The expectation was near universal and proved to be accurate. The vast majority of businesses promptly reopened to the degree they were able and that varied with the sector. The majority of the manufacturing community was able to resume operations with minimal adjustment. Their biggest challenge was with their employees as there was a desire to protect the workforce from exposure and that necessitated new protocols as far as distancing and hygiene. The companies that could assign some workers to do their jobs at home did so, but most of the manufacturing activity does not lend itself to remote operations so barriers were erected, new rules established and workers were closely monitored.
In addition to the issues of protection there are old challenges such as finding the appropriate worker for the job. There has been a massive wave of layoffs but these have overwhelmingly been in the service sector and very few of those that are now seeking work have the skills needed by the manufacturer (or by construction or transportation or the medical sector). The attempt by the government to limit the damage from the lockdown meant providing extensive aid to the newly unemployed but that has meant that millions of people are resisting the resumption of employment until that government help runs out. That leaves many companies short of the people they need to start back up.
The sectors that were hit the hardest and have struggled to rebound have been in the service arena. These are the jobs where personal interaction is nearly impossible to eliminate. Food service establishments are still only partly functional and event business is still completely closed down. Personal services have resumed but under very different circumstances and it remains unclear how well the consumer will adapt.
The two negative readings were in capital investment and steel consumption and this is interesting. The desire to invest in either new machinery or expansion is still very low as the future of the rebound remains in question. Most companies have been working off their inventory and have not needed to add anything – there is still plenty of slack. The investment outlook remains cautious. Steel consumption remains down as there has been a collapse in public sector activity and the commercial construction sector has not figured out demand as yet. The vehicle sector is growing again but carmakers are still working off their old inventory.“
It was late in 2019 that Solar Manufacturing announced that they had received an order for a new vacuum furnace from a company by the name of MµShield in NH, USA. In this press release we see that the expansion is now complete and as a bonus we can see the furnace is installed and functioning.
“MµShield (Londonderry, N.H.) today announced the completion of a years-long expansion of its manufacturing facility. The 12,000 square-foot expansion will feature ~6,000 ft2 of new manufacturing space, 8 new offices for MµShield employees, and a state-of-the-art magnetic testing room to bolster the company’s magnetic shielding operation and service.
Twenty percent of the increased footprint will serve as the new home of MµShield’s newly acquired solar vacuum furnace, which will be used to conduct heat-treating mumetal magnetic shields and stress-relieving hydroformed components. (Mumetal is a soft ferromagnetic material that does not retain a macroscopic internal field after the removal of an external magnetizing field. It is used to shield sensitive electronic equipment against static or low-frequency magnetic fields.) MµShield said it purchased the solar vacuum furnace because of the growth the company has experienced over the last 5 years.
“Due to significant growth over the last 10 years, we had begun to burst at the seams a bit, so this expansion was imperative, said MµShield sales & marketing VP Luke Grilli in a news release. “With growth comes the need for more manpower and machines, thus this additional space allow us to continue making capital investments where we may have passed in the past because of the lack of space. With new machines on the floor, we’ll be able to offer quicker turns on delivery and possibly new technologies that we can take advantage of, and pass those advantages on to our customer base — a win-win for all parties involved.“
