Back in 2016 NTN Driveshaft first announced the construction of a new plant in Anderson, Indiana, USA with an initial investment of $84.5 million and the creation of 300 jobs. Just last week the company announced a $58 million USD expansion of this facility which would bring total jobs to approximately 500. Needless to say we are mentioning this because part of this new investment will allow for in house heat treating. While we are speaking about manufacturers adding in house heat treating capacity another one which comes to mind is Komatsu Mining Corp. Group, in Milwaukee, WI, USA. Back in 2018 the company announced a $300 million USD investment in a brand new state of the art manufacturing facility, one which would include a new heat treating department. While we don’t believe any orders have been placed yet we do understand that these plans are moving forward.

Polish furnace manufacturer SECO/WARWICK issued a press release last week announcing that they had received an order from a fastener manufacturer by the name of STALMAX. “In the world of heat treatment, SECO/WARWICK is known for creating innovative technological solutions for heat and thermo-chemical treatment. STALMAX, a manufacturer of fasteners, has decided to invest in one such innovation, an ATG processing line based on a belt furnace for tempering in a protective atmosphere. The provided equipment is designed for hardening fasteners, such as bolts and nuts, intended for the automotive industry. The main element of the line is a belt furnace equipped with a muffle, in which the heat process is conducted in a protective endothermic atmosphere. The applied design solutions allow for a high evenness of temperature uniformity to be achieved. The automated process of the work of the line, equipped with a weighing system, enables a precise loading of the treated elements on the hardening furnace belt.”

In Clackamas, Oregon, USA (near Portland) we find a commercial heat treater by the name of Met-Tek who is celebrating their 50^th year in business (we have had two photos of the company on the website in the past couple of weeks). Owned by a super friendly, happy guy by the name of Jerry Shriner the company is like many commercials in that it is family owned and run as Jerry works side by side with his two sons Jason and Brandon. We have two photos to go with this item, the first shows from the left Eric Wiegele, Jerry Shriner, Brandon Shriner, and Gord Montgomery in the vacuum department, the second shows part of the atmosphere department.

In Texas there was a fellow by the name of Paul Zettler who for a number of years ran a small company doing vacuum furnaces rebuilds and installs. He disappeared from the industry for a short while, until just last week when we received this e-mail from him. “Dear Gord, Rumors of my disappearance are greatly exaggerated.  Paul Zettler, formerly Senior Project Manager of Alphatek of Texas, Inc. has returned to availability to the Heat Treating Industry.  To say what happened, in a nutshell, we worked ourselves out of customers, by reducing downtime and increasing the reliability of our customers’ equipment!  Customers are reluctant to call on a service company, when the equipment is working properly, and even more reluctant to pay a bill when no service is being performed! We decided that due to the limited number of furnaces in Texas, and difficulty in providing our level of service at extended distances, that Alphatek had out lived its value to the industry and was liquidated in 2019. We now have re-joined a former firm that we were affiliated with a number of years ago, High Tech Services (www.hightechservices.com), of Richardson, TX, designing and building custom automated process equipment, supporting vacuum processes including Heat Treatment, and located in the Dallas Area.”   

Buehler Celebrates the 100^th anniversary of Wilson Hardness Testers. Everybody in heat treating has at some point or another run across a Wilson Hardness Tester. Well the company is celebrating 100 years in the business; “Lake Bluff, Illinois… Throughout 2020 Buehler is celebrating the 100-year anniversary of its acclaimed Wilson® hardness brand which was originally known as the Wilson Mechanical Instrument Company. Here Stanley Rockwell and founder Charles H. Wilson introduced the Rockwell hardness tester, an industry standard. Later, Wilson became the home of the legendary Tukon line of micro-indentation testers – renowned for Knoop and Vickers testing. These early inventions revolutionized industry and paved the way for Wilson today, with innovations that improve usability and allow for full connectivity and automation like the DiaMet software and the powerful and versatile Universal hardness tester.”

March 26^th & 27^th alloy provider Frieder. Lohmann GmbH of Germany will be hosting a “Pit Furnace Symposium” in Düsseldorf, Germany. In attendance will be speakers from companies such as Aichelin, KGO, SECO/WARWICK, Mesa Electronics and others. It’s interesting that pit furnaces are far more common in Europe as opposed to North America and we have never been entirely sure why. One of the sponsors of the event is commercial heat treater Reese, of Germany and they boast the largest pit carburizing furnace in Germany, a photo of which you can see below.

Wall Colmonoy Announces Spring Session of Modern Furnace Brazing School in USA May 12-14, 2020. “Take Part in the Only Hands-On Brazing Seminar. Preserving the tradition originated by the late Robert Peaslee, a brazing pioneer who invented the first nickel-based brazing filler metal, Wall Colmonoy offers a spring session of Modern Furnace Brazing School on May 12-14, 2020 at Wall Colmonoy’s Aerobraze Brazing Engineering Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Engineers, technicians, quality managers, production managers, and others will participate in “hands-on” practical applications while learning about brazing technology from the industry’s leading brazing engineers. For over 60 years, Wall Colmonoy engineers have been gaining practical experience on actual problems in brazing plants around the world.” In France commercial heat treater Thermi-Lyon (the second largest in the country) was recently awarded heat treating certifications for their Thermi-Picardie location by Caterpillar. The certification covers several areas including this Nitrex gas nitrider.

And we are going to round out the Monday Morning Briefing with these photos from captive heat treater and machine tool builder Gleason Works in Rochester, NY, USA. In addition to gear cutting equipment the company also offers Gleason Press Quench Units which they use in their own hear treating department as you can see here.

Commercial heat treater Stack Metallurgical has made our news section 3 times recently, first when we attended the open house of the firm’s new “HIP” facility in Albany, Oregon, second when we provided a photo of their SECO/WARWICK vacuum carburizer-the largest in North America and the third time was when we showed photos of their very recent Ipsen bottom load vacuum furnace installation (all of these news items are still included in our Heat Treat News Page). The reason the company warrants such attention is that with four locations, Portland, Oregon, Albany, Oregon, Spokane, Washington  and Salt Lake City, Utah Stack is the largest in the US Northwest and probably deserves to be on our list of the largest in North America https://themonty.com/largest-commercial-heat-treats/ Stack is a family owned business, Dave and Dan Ederer to be exact and a company which isn’t afraid to make a large dollar investment if the returns are there, hence their decision to invest $25 million USD in a new HIP plant. It is what we would call a full service heat treat which is quite common in the US Northwest, Batch IQ furnaces, Aluminum Drop Bottoms, mesh belt brazing furnaces, vacuum hardening units-even an Ipsen Ion nitriding system. We have always firmly believed that a picture is worth a 1,000 words hence these 4 photos which we took just over a week ago.

Doug Puerta, CEO, Brad Kaufman, Production Manager, Mike Deaner, Maintenance Manager, Nels Plough, President, Craig Beaumier, Sales Manager

 Mike Deaner, Maintenance Manager. We have always felt that a good Maintenance Manager is worth his weight in gold and Mike is a perfect example. Mike rebuilt this over 20 year old Ipsen vacuum furnace and by the time he was finished it looked brand new.

We welcome our most recent advertiser, ROHDE Schutzgasöfen GmbH of Germany whose banner ad can be found on the right hand side of this page approximately half way down. Rohde is best known in North America for their SRU (Salt Recovery Units) https://www.rohdetherm.de/en/produkte/verdampferanlagen/

Each of these photos were taken just last week at heat treating departments in the Northwestern, USA and each has a story attached to it-we will tell you the stories later next week and early next week. Along the same lines we expect to be able to report on the heat treating market in Portugal in just a few short weeks, which should make for an interesting change of pace. It will come as no surprise to most that the Portuguese market is quite small when it comes to captive heat treating, but what might surprise many is that Portugal is well know around the world for producing molds and consequently the country has a large number of vacuum furnaces dedicated to heat treating of molds. The largest commercial heat treating company in the country is a firm called “Ramada” which has about 20 furnaces mainly vacuum hardening and vacuum nitriding all of which are from French furnace builder BMI. Ramada has been around for over 75 years and in addition to the vacuum furnaces they also have 3 carburizing and oil quenching. While we at “The Monty” have yet to visit the firm we understand that it is a well maintained and very clean operation.  We will get back to you on heat treating in Portugal.

There was a news report in several Milwaukee, WI, USA newspapers and on this site reporting that commercial heat treater FPM Heat Treating based in Elk Grove, Illinois, USA would be closing their facility at 11200 W. Heather Avenue in Milwaukee by mid May of 2020. As it turns out this report was not entirely accurate. The company will be relocating the equipment from this plant to their other locations and all the employees at this facility have been offered jobs at either the Elk Grove or Cherry Valley locations, an offer which a number of employees have accepted. FPM is one of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America as rated by “The Monty” https://themonty.com/largest-commercial-heat-treats/ This photo shows part of the FPM team at the Elk Grove plant back in 2018 when we last visited.

The commercial heat treating industry all around the world is dominated by family owned businesses-as “The Monty” has always been a family owned business we have always had a soft spot in our hearts for these companies. Out near Portland, Oregon Thermal Modification Technologies is a perfect example. The President is Andy Tobin (who can be seen standing on the carbottom charge car) who is the grandson of the original founder. The firm has approximately 50 employees and is a perfect example of a “full service” heat treater, carbottom furnaces for stress relieving and annealing, batch IQ furnaces, Ion Nitriding, Induction Hardening and Vacuum hardening, there really are few processes that the company doesn’t offer. The various processes reflect the fact that the market in Oregon is very diversified, we saw automotive parts, structural steel products, oil field components, parts for the logging industry-it was a wide variety which must be a comfort during economic downturns.  These photos will give you an idea about the firm, basically a clean, well organized plant with lots of room to grow and expand which is Andy’s stated goal-and a nice bunch of people to boot.

“Aerospace Testing & Pyrometry would like to announce the opening of our newest regional office in Greenville, SC. The new office will be headed by our Southeast Division Manager Richard Rasmussen. The territory will include North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. Andrew Bassett, President of Aerospace Testing & Pyrometry states, “With the numerous aerospace primes and supporting companies flooding the southeastern US and the high demand for our services from the southeast region for ATP’s Pyrometry Services, we decided to open a permanent office in the Greenville, South Carolina to better provide our services. We have been supporting our current clients from the east coast, but now with an office in the Greenville, we will be able to grow and expand those services. The Southeastern US provides an excellent opportunity for growth with numerous Nadcap Heat Treat accredited facilities in the area, as well as captive & commercial heat treaters looking for expert and affordable onsite Pyrometry services.”

Richard Rasmussen started out as our West Coast Division and has been with ATP since 2016. Richard has over 15 years of experience in the heat treating and Pyrometry field. He experiences includes Pyrometry technician, furnace operator and a qualified FAA hardness inspector. Richard was previously employed at a Nadcap accredited heat treat facility that was able to achieve merit status during his tenure. He was responsible for all Pyrometry testing and compliance for entire thermal processing equipment. One of his best attributes is his ability to troubleshoot and resolve issues with heat treating furnaces. He has a full understanding of AMS-2750E as well as prime aerospace Pyrometry specifications and has heat treat audit
experience.

About ATP: Aerospace Testing & Pyrometry, Inc. is an ISO/IEC 17025 accredited company specializing in the onsite calibration of temperature processing instrumentation, calibration of vacuum measuring systems and temperature uniformity surveys for thermal processing equipment. We also specialize in consulting and training in Pyrometry Specifications, Heat Treat Consulting & Procedure Writing and Consulting for Nadcap Accreditations in Heat Treating, Non-Destructive Testing (NDT), Welding, Brazing & Materials Test Laboratories. With offices located in Bethlehem, PA, Stroudsburg, PA, Hartford, CT, Cleveland, OH, Tulsa, OK, Los Angeles, CA, Greenville, SC, Bedford, OH (Lab) and Muskegon, MI, our services have reached through-out the United States, Mexico, Canada and Europe. For more information, please visit www.atpcal.com or call Andrew Bassett at 844-828-7225″

Andrew Bassett, Gord Montgomery, Tom Zimmerman

Oregon Induction + Thermal is one of a very rare breed of commercial heat treater in that they have grown and prospered over the years largely by offering Induction hardening. As a matter of fact we can count on the fingers of one hand the number of commercials in North America who concentrate on induction work. Probably the fact that they have been successful at it is because they can handle such a wide variety of parts, shafts up to 14′ long on a vertical scanner, and gears with a diameter of up to 14′.  Having said that the company recently changed their name from Oregon Induction to Oregon Induction + Thermal to reflect on the fact that the company also offers carburizing and aluminum processing. The carburizing department has a number of Beavermatic IQ furnaces (funny how you really only see Beavermatic furnaces on the west coast of the USA or in Texas) and the aluminum department has two medium size aluminum drop bottom ovens. Oregon is a family owned business started in 1981, run by Jeremy Parker son of the founder of the company  and in total in occupies roughly 40,000 square feet. With over 50 employees we would say this is a larger than average commercial operation and like many in the industry in North America these days they report that business has been good and continues to be good. These photos give you more details.

Tony Moran, Cindy Barbo, C.F.O.O., Jeremy Parker, Owner & President