Captive heat treater and supplier of industrial process instrumentation Krohne has just installed the largest horizontal vacuum furnace in the UK. The furnace which was supplied by Ipsen, has working dimensions of 1200mm x 1200mm x 2400mm with an all moly hot zone and 6 bar quenching. It was installed by Vacuum & Atmosphere Services who have just completed the installation with commissioning planned for next week. Mike Long of VAS has these comments;

“We are proud to announce the delivery, install & build up of the UK’s largest horizontal vacuum furnace! VAS furnace engineers have completed the build up within 6 days & now ready for commissioning. We would like to thank all of our engineers for their hard work completing the build up & install during these challenging times. For all furnace requirements, both vacuum & atmosphere, please feel free to enquire by email at [email protected] or via telephone on +44 (0) 121 544 4385. Alternatively check out our website for all services & products provided including refurbished vacuum furnace, furnace spares & furnace servicing. https://www.vacat.co.uk/

Darren Hawes,  Production Engineering Manager at Krohne has this to say; Excellent work from VAS to get the furnace installed during the Pandemic after being asked to take over full control due to travel restrictions by Ipsen. Getting the largest lorry into the factory was something to behold. Looking forward to seeing VAS fully commission the furnace and to continue working with them for years to come. Mike has ensured a very smooth process between Krohne and Ipsen from the offset.”

“RUBIG Industrial Furnaces, a leading manufacturer of heat treating furnaces, is actually putting the two largest nitriding furnaces in their company history into operation! Both of them are MICROPULS® Everest DUO plasma nitriding furnaces – the technological flagship of the Austrian company. 

The first furnace has already been installed at our sister company, RUBIG Heat Treatment Services, in Wels (Austria). One of its chambers is designed for components with a maximum length of 9.85 ft (3 m). The other one even measures a height of 19.685 ft (6 m) and hence presents the second largest usable height ever designed at RUBIG. The largest chamber so far measured 24.6 ft (7.5 m). Particularly long components like shafts, spindles or screws can now be nitrided, nitrocarburized and/or oxidized at RUBIG Heat Treatment Services.

The second furnace order has just been placed by a Chinese customer. The furnace chamber measures a usable height and a usable diameter of 9.85 ft (3 m) each. This will be the largest diameter in a furnace built by RUBIG ever. Although the furnace itself is manufactured in Austria, the order is a great success for the young subsidiary RUBIG Industrial Furnaces Taicang, China! In addition to their sizes, MICROPULS® Everest furnaces convince with an outstanding process control and environmental compatibility. They are the technological spearheads of RUBIG Industrial Furnaces and have lifted RUBIG up to new heights in nitriding and coating expertise. With the two units, these new heights have literally been reached!”

IWT Bremen, Germany is a research organization jointly funded by the German government and private industry to research materials and heat treating processes. We have been fortunate enough to be able to visit their facility in Bremen several times over the years and have been suitably impressed as the institute has numerous examples of the most up to date heat treating technologies in the world. LPC, Vacuum Nitriding, Induction, High pressure gas quenching vacuum furnaces-IWT has the newest and best toys around. The previous Managing Director, Dr. Ing. Hans-Werner Zoch can be seen on the left in one of the photos below, the other photos show part of the facility and some of the equipment.

“IFHTSE Bulletin; Our member institute Leibniz-IWT will have a new director as of 1st of June, 2020 when Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Rainer Fechte-Heinen succeeds Prof. Dr.Ing. Hans-Werner Zoch as Managing Director.

Prof. Dr. Fechte-Heinen completed his studies of mechanical engineering from 2000 to 2004 with the main focus on materials simulation and mechanics in Bochum, Seville and Berkeley. In 2007, he completed his doctorate at the Ruhr University of Bochum on the subject of simulating martensitic phase transformations in shape memory alloys. He then worked part-time on his habilitation, gave his own lectures continuously since 2009, and was appointed as a Privatdozent at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in 2014 and honorary professor of materials mechanics of phase transformations in solids in 2018. From 2007 to 2020 Prof. Dr. Fechte-Heinen held various positions at thyssenkrupp Steel Europe AG in the materials competency center and in research and development. He was responsible among other things for optimization projects for existing steels and their production systems, the development of innovative functional materials, idea generation and validation, and IP management. Before joining Leibniz-IWT, he was head of product development with a focus on hardened, tempered and multiphase hot-rolled steel products.

IWT has been a stronghold of IFHTSE throughout the existence of our Federation and even before. The foundation dates back to the 40ties, with our German member association AWT being one of the donators. The first director Otto Schaaber initiated the first truly multinational discussion on heat treatment as early as 1955, which subsequently lead to regular international conferences and, to form a responsible body to hold them, the foundation of IFHTSE in 1972. All IWT directors have served as IFHTSE presidents: Otto Schaaber 197576, Hans-Peter Mayr, who is also an IFHTSE fellow, 1996-97, and Hans-Werner Zoch 2010-11. For more than ten years, IWT has pursued an extensive research programme, directed by IFHTSE fellow Thomas Lübben, on Distortion Engineering. The respective conference series was merged with IFHTSE’s series on Quenching and Control of Distortion, leading to the QDE series with the next event due in April 2021 in Berlin, Germany. IFHTSE is deeply grateful to Hans-Werner Zoch for his numerous and enduring active contributions to our work, most prominently during his presidency 2010-2011. We congratulate Rainer Fechte-Heinen on his new position and look forward to a continuing intense cooperation!”

“AFC-Holcroft announces the retirement of Marc Ruetsch, Managing Director of European Operations, on May 29, 2020.  Ruetsch, who joined AFC-Holcroft in 2008, spent his entire career spanning nearly 50 years working exclusively with materials and heat treatment equipment, never leaving the industry he found so interesting as a young engineer in France and Switzerland.  He worked for several European furnace companies prior to joining AFC-Holcroft, and was key to the success of the company’s satellite office in Europe. 

As previously announced, Marek Kedzyrzynski has now assumed the role of Director of European Operations, and the base of operations for AFC-Holcroft Europe has moved to Kedzyrzinski’s native Poland.

Kedzyrzinski said of Ruetsch: “Marc is a great man, a good friend and an expert in the field of heat treatment. I am really glad that I could work with him for several years, and I would like to express my thanks for a great job he did to build strong new relationships for AFC-Holcroft in the European market. I wish him well in his retirement.”

Tracy Dougherty, Vice President of Sales for AFC-Holcroft added, “Marc and I started at AFC-Holcroft within months of each other.  Marc’s technical knowledge and professionalism helped AFC-Holcroft grow the European market exponentially during his tenure with the company.  We wish him a healthy, relaxing and much deserved retirement.   

Bill Disler, President & CEO of AFC-Holcroft recalls, “Marc joined AFC-Holcroft not long after I rejoined the group.   I remember Bill Keough (former owner of AFC-Holcroft) proudly finding Marc’s contact information by personally searching on the internet and giving it to me as a suggestion when we were looking to open our European office in 2008.  Bill Keough had very fond memories of working with Marc years before when AFC had a licensing agreement with Solo, where  Marc worked at that time, and made such a positive impression that Bill never forgot him.   Shortly after we connected via email, Marc and I met at that years’ ThermProcess show in Dusseldorf and he agreed to join our team.   We kicked off our European activity and never looked back.” Disler added, “We will miss him but wish him the best with his well-deserved retirement.” 

In a farewell message to colleagues at AFC-Holcroft, Ruetsch wrote the following: “As I move on to the next chapter, I would like to stop for a moment and thank all of you for the continuous support and the friendly atmosphere you brought, without which my mission wouldn’t have been possible here in Europe.

I am grateful for the opportunity and appreciate all the help you have provided me in pursuing my career in the heat treatment field, and in particular I have a very special regard for Bill Disler, whose trust has enabled me to make it happen.”

Ruetsch also said, “After nearly a half century devoted to the construction of industrial furnaces,  I don’t leave the world of heat treatment with regrets because I know that the younger people – the engineers who are now entering a similar career path – bring valuable technical knowledge, and will continue to enrich this fascinating field.”  With his typical enthusiasm, he summarized his affection for the industry as, “Heat treatment is a discipline driven by people with great technical and human values, contributing a valuable asset to humanity. “

We have always said that one of our favorite heat treat events in the world is the annual HK 2020 Congress held October of each year in Germany. We are now getting word that due to COVID 19 there will be substantial changes made and that this year the HK Congress will take place as an online event. We are awaiting more details from the organizers, AWT but to cut a long story short the usual exhibition will not be held this year which is very upsetting for both exhibitors and visitors alike. So far every major heat treating event that was due to be held in the first half of 2020 has been cancelled or postponed which makes you wonder about future events. The largest North American show of the year Furnaces North America (FNA) is scheduled for September 30 to October 2 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA and I am sure that many in the industry are wondering whether there will be any changes. We leave you with this photo of the ALD booth taken at the HK 2019 event in Cologne.

Interesting press release from Istanbul Heat Treatment Inc., about how they are offering new Plasma nitriding systems.

“Istanbul Heat Treatment Inc. has been serving for heat treatment services in the field of Plasma Nitriding since 1993,  started to serve for the same industry by manufacturing furnaces / processes / plants by beginning of 2019. The i-nitcold-800 model Plasma Nitriding Furnace produced with its own registered brand i-nit®; which has  Ø 1000 mm x Height 1000 mm useful dimensions and 800 kg loading capacity is ready for shipment to the customer factory as all operational and process application tests are completed successfully. The i-nit® brand has taken its place in the market with hot wall, cold wall i-nitcold-800; the first Plasma Nitriding Furnace with i-nit® brand, produced by Istanbul Heat Treatment Inc., is ready for shipment and laboratory scale furnaces for plasma nitriding needs.

i-nit® Pulse Plasma Nitriding Systems Istanbul Heat Treatment Inc., which has been producing Plasma Nitriding Furnaces only for its own needs until 2019, has decided to produce the Plasma Nitriding Furnaces as a separate product and  presented the first Pulse Plasma Nitriding Furnace with i-nit® brand to the market in 2020, with its low process temperatures, regional hardening capability, flexibility to adjust the surface metallurgy, silent operation, repeatability, advantages of processing in vacuum furnaces and its environment-user friendly feature. In i-nit® Plasma Nitriding Furnaces; with the Plasma Nitriding / Nitrocarburizing process, which can be applied to parts of various weights and sizes from a few grams to several tons, it is possible to easily nitride any iron-based material including stainless steels and cast irons. Istanbul Heat Treatment Inc. offers its 25 years of knowledge and experience in the field of Plasma Nitriding / Nitrocarburizing with furnaces produced under the i-nit® brand.

i-nit® Plasma Nitriding Furnaces; operate with PLC control with easy user interface, and it has the opportunity to make standard productions depending on customer or product by means of the ready to work recipes. In addition to full-automatic operation feature, i-nit® Plasma Nitriding Furnaces have completely manual or semi-automatic operation options. Beside of all these capabilities, Istanbul Heat Treatment Inc. will always support the customers both for using of common recipes and the new process design by presenting its 25 years of experience to the customers.”

WG Montgomery Ltd., (“The Monty”) is proud to announce that we are now members of the Industrial Heating Equipment Association. This is how the association describes themselves;

“The Industrial Heating Equipment Association (IHEA) is a voluntary national trade association representing the major segments of the industrial heat processing equipment industry. Established in 1929 to meet the need for effective group action in promoting the interest of industrial furnace manufacturers. The organization has expanded and currently includes designers, manufacturers and corporate end users of all types of industrial heat processing equipment and systems.”

During the US Memorial Day Holiday we will be thinking about all of our friends in the USA.

“To our valued customers, vendors and colleagues,

It is with very deep regret that we inform you today of the unexpected passing of Don Robbins, our brother, and President of Cambridge Heat Treating. Don passed away at home in the early hours of May 22nd.

Cambridge Heat Treating was founded in 1982 by the late Robert Robbins, our father, and Don has been fully involved in the operation of the business since the beginning. Many of you have gotten to know Don quite well over the years, and it saddens us immensely to bring this news to you all today.

At this time we do not have any information to share with regards to funeral arrangements. Our hearts extend to his loving and devoted wife Tracy, and their three children Mikaela, Madison and Mack.

Sincerely Cheryl and Peter”

Peter and Don Robbins