Brian Babcock has spent the last 39 years in the commercial heat treating industry, working for two of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America. He started with FPM back in 1982 and after 21 years there he moved on to Bluewater Thermal where he worked for 17 years retiring with the title of Business Development Manager, Midwest. If you would like to know more about the relative sizes of FPM and Bluewater we would suggest
https://themonty.com/project/largest-north-american-commercial-heat-treats-august-2020/

To the surprise of no one and the disappointment of all Furnaces North America, FNA 2020 will go to a virtual format this year. FNA, the largest heat treatment show in North America in 2020 was to have been held in Louisville, Kentucky, USA September 30^th to October 2^nd but the actual live portion of the show has been cancelled. We are not entirely sure what a “virtual” show will look like but we have some details in the official press release which is further down. This means that every single major heat treat event around the world since February of this year has been forced to abandon the live portion of each event-a truly disappointing result. By the way for the past number of years there has generally been one major North American heat treatment event each year, alternating between FNA one year and the ASM Heat Treating Conference and Exposition and Gear Expo the next. The next ASM event is scheduled to be held September of 2021 so at this point in time it would appear that ASM will be the next large heat treating “get together” in North America-too bad we have to wait over a year for the heat treatment industry to get together again. We leave you with a couple of photos from the last FNA event which was held in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA back in 2018.

 McLaughlin Furnace Group

Cleveland Electric Laboratories

 Bernie Parry, Heat Treat Central. Unfortunately our good friend Bernie passed away earlier this year.

  John Hubbard, Thermal Process Holdings, Ed Stenger, Kentucky Heat Treat, Dan McCurdy, Bodycote (retired)

“After much analysis, feedback from attendees, and the uncertainty of COVID-19, the MTI Board of Trustees have approved for the Furnaces North America Trade Show and Conference to transition to a virtual format as of today. MTI 2020 President, Jim Oakes from Super Systems stated, “With so much of our business moving to a digital arena, FNA 2020 will be a great opportunity for the heat treating industry to take a step into this digital space. Although we will miss the in person interaction, the FNA team is working hard with digital technology to create the same personalized interaction digitally. The great thing about digital, is FNA can bring the latest knowledge and trends to every heat treater’s computer screen at a very affordable value.”

FNA Show Producer Tom Morrison states, “The FNA Show Production team has been working diligently the last two months on our virtual strategy for both exhibitors and attendees. It is going to be an energetic and dynamic experience that encompass all the same features of a live event including technical sessions, networking, and exhibitors. Participants are going to love it because now every captive and commercial heat treater can engage his entire company or division to participate and learn right from their computer.”

Attendees will be able to experience the virtual exhibit hall for free. For those wanting to view the 3 LIVE panel discussions and 35 technical sessions, FNA is offering a special for attendees of $199 for each of the first two registrants from a company and $49 for every person after that. To qualify, everyone must register on the same online registration form. 

Furnaces North America is the largest heat treat only trade show and conference in North America every other year.  FNA is produced by the Metal Treating Institute in conjunction with their media partner Industrial Heating Magazine.

 Full details will be on the FNA 2020 Virtual Show Site at www.FurnacesNorthAmeric.com starting July 13.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact FNA 2020 at [email protected].”

“East Troy, WI – June 30^th, 2020 – Wisconsin Oven Corporation is pleased to announce a new IoT (Internet of things) predictive maintenance technology available on their industrial ovens. The new system will be supplied by DataSense Technologies™ and is capable of monitoring the performance and health of components on the ovens. Wisconsin Oven is dedicated to offering their customers the most advanced capabilities in the industry and believes that this IoT connectivity will be of great value to their customers.

The DataSense Technologies™ Performance Monitoring System utilizes sensors to monitor the condition of components on a customer’s industrial oven. The system features a gateway that collects performance data from sensors on critical oven components. There are a variety of conditions that the sensors track such as, vibration, temperature, current, and pressure.

By adding the Performance Monitoring System to an industrial oven, the data collected can be used to identify performance and component issues so maintenance can be scheduled before a failure occurs. Some thresholds are factory-set to protect the equipment and Customers can work with Wisconsin Oven to set thresholds to indicate alarm conditions specific to their needs.  When those thresholds are exceeded, the Performance Monitoring System will send an immediate alert to the appropriate personnel. The service team will use this information to predict component failures before they happen which minimizes unscheduled downtime and increases both productivity and profitability.

Wisconsin Oven is committed to providing quality products while meeting the technology requirements of today’s connected world. For more information on a DataSense Technologies™ Performance Monitoring System for your industrial oven click here to view a detailed video. Call us today or visit our website www.wisoven.com to request a quote on adding a system to your next industrial oven or retrofit your current equipment.”

Quite recently Peters Heat Treat in Meadville, PA, USA had a celebration in honor of their new Meadville facility as you can see in this posting; “This morning we FINALLY got to a have a little celebration and cut the ribbon at our new Meadville home. Thank you to all of the PHT Team for your hard work in making this dream a reality and thank you to the Meadville-Western Crawford County Chamber of Commerce for helping us to take a second to recognize such a monumental step.” Peters is a family owned commercial heat treater founded by Doug Peters and it has grown into quite a substantial facility over the years. We have a photo from the recent celebration and another one which “The Monty” took just a year ago.

In spite of the COVID 19 crisis heat treating investments have not come to a complete halt-as a matter of fact we can think of several recent or on going expansions. S & P Products in CA., will shortly be installing a large carbottom furnace to compliment their in house heat treating department. An auto parts maker in MO, USA which had never done heat treating in house before recently invested in a multi million dollar state of the art facility. And in Indiana, USA a powdered metal company is in the process of adding several batch IQ furnace. So you see there are still many signs of life in the industry.

Industrial Heating Equipment Association (of which “The Monty” is a member) offers on a regular basis economic reports about the industry. The May 2020 report is complete, detailed and well presented but rather depressing as you can see. We have abbreviated the report to some extent and eliminated the graphs, however if you can picture a series of graphs that go straight down you get the picture.

“May 2020.  If you are faint of heart this might be a good time to stop reading the report. As one would expect there is not a lot of good news coming from this collection of indices. The lockdown recession has been with us for over three months now and there are few that have not experienced the impact. Having said that, it is important to offer a point of clarification regarding the data presented here. By most accounts this will be the bottom and future reports will start to show slow improvement. The lockdown has been eased to a considerable degree and there have been consistent assertions that economic growth will rebound by the third and fourth quarter. It is true that some of this may be wishful thinking but there are some indications that such a forecast may be realistic.

As you review the charts below there will be a very common theme – they all show declines that are nearly a straight line down. There is one notable exception to this rule. The data for the Credit Managers’ Index shows that same drastic decline but with a nice little upwards trend at the end. Given that this is only bright spot in the report this month, some detail is in order. The CMI is an index that is structured similarly to the Purchasing Managers’ Index with the same diffusion index which indicates that any reading over 50 indicates growth and any number under 50 suggests contraction. The index is divided into favorable and unfavorable categories from the perspective of a credit manager. The favorables include categories such as “sales,” “applications for credit,” “dollar collections” and “amount of credit extended.” The unfavorables include “rejections of credit applications,” “accounts out for collection,” “disputes,” “slow pays” and “bankruptcies.”

The severe decline that was noted in March and April was due almost entirely to the collapse in the favorable data. The sales numbers had been in the 60s and they fell to the 20s and low 30s. So did the numbers for applications, dollar collections and amount of credit extended. This month these numbers recovered substantially. They did not get back to the 60s or even the 50s but they made it back to the 40s and that counts as promising. Credit managers tend to think in the future as they are most concerned with what shape a debtor will be in when they are due to pay. If a company has 90 or 120 or 180 days to pay the credit manager is not going to worry about them until that time. The fact that they are getting a bit more confident now indicates that they are starting to see some positive developments down the road and not all that far away.

The other index items are all telling a pretty miserable story with record setting declines. There is no mystery at all as to why this is the case as the lockdown was universal and sudden. There was no time at all for business or the consumer to prepare and there have been very few options available since the declaration. The expectation now is that the economy has likely reached the bottom and will show some improvement in the months to come. There was already some good news coming from the Labor Department as they released the latest job numbers. It has been expected that unemployment would hit 20% but in the report the number was somewhat less than feared – 13.4%. Given that unemployment stood at 3.5% in February it is good that over 3.5 million jobs were gained. Where the economy goes from here will depend on three factors. The first and most important will be the attitude of the consumer. If there is to be a real rebound the consumer will have to want to resume their old behaviors and soon. It is already evident that purchases of goods have improved but 65% of consumer spending of discretionary income is devoted to services and these have been slower to recover (restaurants, bars, entertainment venues). The second factor will be the reaction of the government and that has varied from state to state. Some have been eager to reopen and others have put off this resumption until into 2021. This set of decisions is dependent on the third factor and that is the course of the viral infection.”

“New Automobile & Light Truck Sales The automotive sector has been one of the hardest hit over the course of the lockdown recession and for a variety of reasons. Not that other sectors have escaped the damage but this category has been especially vulnerable. To begin with there was the fact that union concerns over the health of the workers mandated an early order to shut down operations. Many of the companies that supplied parts to the assembly operations were likewise closed and imported parts from Asia and elsewhere have been significantly delayed and in many cases these suppliers also closed or were cut off. Right now, there are over 500,000 merchant sailors stranded on their ships and in ports as they are unable to leave due to pandemic restrictions. This has all but shut down the global supply chain. As if all this were not enough there has been a collapse in consumer demand as the lockdown has meant a drastic increase in job loss. If there is any encouraging sign for the future it would be that consumers will likely be relying on their vehicles for travel and entertainment to a greater degree in the future but that is not doing the industry much good at the moment.”

Due to the Fourth of July celebrations we will be closed today but will be resuming regular news updates on Monday July Seventh.  

The link below will take you to the July 2020 issue of “The Monty”, the world’s largest source for heat treatment news. This issue is sponsored by “Williams Industrial Services”, “Phoenix TM”, “Grammer Vacuum Technologies” and “Graphite Materials”. As always we look forward to your thoughts and comments. Best regards, Gord, Jordan and Dale Montgomery.

https://themonty.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/themontyjuly2020.pdf

Back in late December 2019 Textron Aviation in Wichita, Kansas, US suffered a mammoth explosion. It came to our attention at the time as there was a great deal of speculation that it was a heat treat furnace which exploded. As it turned out is was an autoclave with liquid nitrogen which bears a very close resemblance to a vacuum furnace. OSHA has now issued a report on the accident and what caused it;

“WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited Textron Aviation for a December 2019 explosion that left 15 employees hurt. According to the citation and notification of penalty from the U.S. Department of Labor, Textron had a serious violation when it failed to protect employees from “autoclave explosion hazards” at the plant located at 130 N. Webb.

The DOL said the liquid nitrogen in a pressurized vessel, referred to as Autoclave 8, built up and the head suffered a “catastrophic thermal fatigue failure.” The result was an explosion that critically injured 15 employees and exposed them to the harms of amputation, broken bones, concussions, crushing, laceration and struck-by hazards, according to the labor department. The proposed penalty for the violation is $13,494. The aviation manufacturer must also develop and implement measures to “effectively control, discover, maintain and repair pressure vessels, including autoclaves.”

Busch Vacuum Solutions one of the best known names in the vacuum pump industry offers us this interesting case study in which they speak about “Dry Vacuum Technology in Heat Treatment Processes”.

“Vacuum technology is an indispensable part of metal heat treatment. The company Vakuum-Härterei Petter GmbH (VHP) in Quickborn, Germany conducted an evaluation in which an oil lubricated rotary vane vacuum pump was replaced by a Busch COBRA NX screw vacuum pump. The vacuum pump was installed as the forepump of a 3-stage system to supply a heat treatment oven, and the objective of the evaluation was to find an efficient alternative to the vacuum generators previously used. After a year of testing VHP is completely convinced by dry screw vacuum technology, and in future will invest only in ovens equipped with COBRA NX screw vacuum pumps.

VHP operates a contract hardening facility at Quickborn, in the north of Germany. The company specialises in high-quality heat treatment under vacuum, and has a total of nine vacuum ovens. The materials handled are mainly high-alloy steels, but non-ferrous metals are also heat treated. The core activities of VHP are hardening, annealing, brazing, soldering and tempering. VHP’s customers include companies throughout Germany in the food, medical, forming and transmission technology sectors. The company currently employs 20 staff. Custom heat treatment for individual customers is offered, and a variety of processes and parameters are available to generate the desired surface properties with reproducible and documented results.

The fundamental role of vacuum in heat treatment processes is to prevent unwanted reactions between the material components and ambient oxygen, as these may have an adverse effect on the surface properties of the metal. The pressure reduction also allows the process to be controlled more precisely. The pressure, temperature and duration of the process can be set to suit specific materials, and controlled according to material characteristics such as the vapour pressure curve. Quenching of the metal after heating is usually carried out with nitrogen, but in some cases argon is used.

VHP has worked with vacuum technology for more than 30 years, the extensive experience gained in this sector allows the company to concentrate on complex heat treatment processes. Managing director Frank Wallberg’s view: “The more challenging customer requirements become, the happier we are“.

VHP has traditionally used oil lubricated rotary vane vacuum pumps to supply all the ovens. These vacuum pumps act as the forepumps of three-stage systems incorporating booster and oil diffusion vacuum pumps. This vacuum pump arrangement can achieve ultimate pressures of up to 1 x 10^-5 mbar in the oven process chamber. If required by the process, the pressure can be increased by introducing controlled amounts of nitrogen.

The oil lubricated rotary vane vacuum pumps originally installed proved to be maintenance-intensive: oil changes and replacement of all filters were required every six months, causing increased costs for servicing, oil, filters, and the disposal of used elements. 

A few years ago one of these rotary vane vacuum pumps was replaced by a COBRA NX screw vacuum pump. This dry-compressing vacuum pump is a development by Busch, and has been designed specifically for heat treatment applications. No operating fluids are present in the compression chamber, making contact between the pumped medium and oil or other operating fluids impossible. This is achieved by two screw profiles which contra-rotate in the compression chamber without making contact with each other or the housing. This simple construction makes the COBRA NX a robust and economical forepump for the vacuum supply system.

The COBRA NX is in operation in a three-shift system, and as pointed out by VHP directors Frank Wallberg and Bernd Raabe, no servicing work was carried out so far. They also observed other advantages: the power consumption remained the same as the old vacuum pump, but the substantially increased pumping speed allowed heat treatment processes to be carried out more rapidly. The low noise levels generated by the COBRA NX test unit were also a pleasant surprise. Both VHP directors agreed that the COBRA NX is the ideal forepump for their future requirements, and when ordering new ovens will insist on models equipped with COBRA NX screw vacuum pumps.”

Fig. 1: COBRA NX screw vacuum pump as the forepump of a three-stage vacuum system. The booster vacuum pump is mounted directly to the COBRA NX by flange connection

Cross-section of a COBRA NX screw vacuum pump