We have always thought of “Century Sun Metal Treating” as being a high-quality commercial heat treater offering vacuum hardening, plasma nitriding, salt bath and carburizing amongst other processes. We will keep you update if more information becomes available.
HTA Group of Companies is celebrating ten years since opening HTA Los Angeles in October 2016, its first operation outside Australia. A new vacuum furnace is being installed at the site to support its next stage of growth.
LOS ANGELES / BRISBANE, 20 October 2026. HTA Los Angeles is based in Santa Fe Springs, California, and provides advanced heat treatment and vacuum aluminium brazing to North American manufacturers. Over ten years it has built a customer base across aerospace, defence and general engineering. The site holds AS9100D and Nadcap accreditation and is accredited to AWS C3.7-2011 for aluminium brazing.
The HTA Los Angeles team with the 10th anniversary plaque presented by SECO/WARWICK Group, in front of the site’s new vacuum furnace.
To mark the anniversary, equipment partner SECO/WARWICK Group presented the Los Angeles team with a commemorative plaque recognising “A Decade of Excellence. A Partnership Built to Last.”
“Ten years ago, we set out to prove that an Australian heat treatment business could compete and succeed in one of the world’s most demanding manufacturing markets,” said Dr Karen Stanton, Director Corporate & Strategy, HTA Group of Companies. “We’re still here a decade later because of our team in Los Angeles and the customers who have trusted us with their work.”
The anniversary comes as HTA expands its US capacity. A new SECO/WARWICK vacuum furnace has been delivered to the Santa Fe Springs site and is due to be fully operational by December 2026. It will meet growing demand for vacuum brazed components such as cold plates, cooling chassis and pressure manifolds used in electronics cooling and thermal management.
“This investment is about the next ten years,” Dr Stanton said. “It gives our customers more capacity and shorter lead times, and it shows our long-term commitment to the US market.” HTA supports aerospace, defence and industrial customers from sites across Australia and the United States.
About HTA Group of Companies
HTA Group of Companies specialises in advanced thermal processing. It has operations in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Los Angeles and serves manufacturers in aerospace, aviation, defence, mining, agriculture, construction, machinery manufacturing and general engineering. HTA’s vision is to be globally recognised in advanced manufacturing and specialised thermal processing.
Norm Tucker, Karen Stanton
Commercial advanced design systems supplied to major A&D customers this year include fully automatic horizontal air quenching / cooling systems. These systems deliver extreme velocity cooling air to parts and for aluminum can heat treat to AQ condition without the distortion normally associated with water quenching. The parts can then naturally age to T4 or artificially age to T6. Artificial aging can be performed in the same furnace chamber due to DELTA H’s exclusive “Aging Mode” capability. Operation of these systems is simply: load, press START, and return when the End Of Cycle Alarm is on to unload the furnace.
Richard Conway, Director and CTO of DELTA H Technologies and a U.S. Air Force veteran, adds: “DELTA H, through our partnership with Phillips Federal Division, continues to expand our presence at not only USAF bases, but also all branches of the Armed Forces. Upon completion of our current backlog, DELTA H will have furnaces installed in approximately 75% of the USAF bases worldwide that perform aircraft maintenance. None of this would be possible without our incredible and dedicated team. DELTA H’s commitment to A&D contractors for technically advanced systems continues to be an exciting aspect of DELTA H’s expanded growth for the present and into the future.”
North American commercial heat treater “Exactatherm” is planning on installing a large capacity pit nitriding furnace according to “The Monty Heat Treat News”. The gas fired unit will have working dimensions of 45″ diameter X 96″ deep and it is planned to enter production early in 2027. The system will compliment an existing pit nitriding furnace installed at their parent company “Metex Heat Treating” several years ago.
“Exactatherm” is part of “Metex Heat Treating”, one of the “52 Largest North American Commercial Heat Treaters” as ranked by “The Monty”.
For more background on “Exactatherm” and “Metex Heat Treating” we would suggest these exclusive background stories from “The Monty”;
“Exactatherm/Steelhead Technologies-The Entire Heat Treat Story”
“Metex Heat Treating Ltd. Announces a Strategic Acquisition of Exactatherm Limited”
“The Differences Between Automotive & Aerospace Heat Treating-Mr. Raman Bawa”
Anoop Bawa, Jordan Montgomery, Sheela Samy, Raman Bawa, Zubair Alam
Raman Bawa, Sheela Samy, Zubair Alam, Gord Montgomery
ECM TECHNOLOGIES, a leading provider of innovative heat treatment and thermochemical processing solutions, announces the launch of its new ‘‘CCN’’ furnace, a next-generation solution designed to help manufacturers improve process performance while reducing energy consumption.
Combining a cold-wall, graphite-free design, high thermal uniformity and adapted to the key modular concept by ECM, the CCN has been engineered to meet the evolving requirements of industrial heat treatment – where productivity, energy efficiency and operational flexibility are becoming increasingly critical.
The CCN is designed for nitriding, nitrocarburizing and carbonitriding applications, as well as dry oxidation. For carbonitriding processes, the furnace can be combined with a graphite cell for the carburizing phase, providing a flexible solution capable of addressing different process requirements within a single system architecture. The CCN offers a 1,000 × 610 × 750 mm load capacity and operates from 400°C to 1,000°C, with high thermal uniformity and 150 kW convection heating. It supports both atmospheric pressure and primary vacuum, providing flexibility for a wide range of industrial applications.
The development of the CCN was driven by a clear objective : to provide manufacturers with a furnace that delivers higher productivity, lower operating costs and greater flexibility, while making day-to-day operation and maintenance easier.
“We developed this new equipment because our customers are facing increasingly demanding production and energy challenges. They need equipment that can process faster, consume less and remain easy to maintain over its lifetime. The cold-wall, graphite-free design of the CCN, combined with its modular architecture, allows us to address these needs while giving our customers greater flexibility to adapt their equipment as their production requirements evolve.” Arthur Pelissier, CEO, ECM Technologies
ABOUT ECM TECHNOLOGIES
ECM TECHNOLOGIES, Grenoble – France (450 employees, 100M€ of Revenue in 2025) designs and manufactures vacuum heat treatment furnaces. ECM’s mastery of thermal processing and equipment allows it to offer turnkey solutions for various applications, and to diversify according to the needs of numerous industries such as : Defense, Automotive, Aeronautics, Electronics and Nuclear applications. Over the past years, ECM Technologies has strengthened its world leading position in Low Pressuer Carburizing applications and now opens a new possitibility to manufacturers with this new cell to always go further in terms of multiprocesses and modularity.
“Tvornica plinskih turbina d.o.o., a Croatian manufacturer of advanced components for the aerospace and energy industries, has ordered a Vector single chamber vacuum with 6 bar abs. High pressure gas quenching from SECO/WARWICK.
This is the Partner’s first vacuum furnace and the beginning of building an in-house heat treatment department. The investment will increase production independence, improve quality control, and reduce the risks related to the timely delivery of external services.
The equipment will be used for the heat treatment of aerospace and gas turbine components that require high process cleanliness, parameter repeatability, and precise cooling control. For the customer, this is the first SECO/WARWICK vacuum furnace and, at the same time, the first vacuum furnace in their machine park. Until now, the company has relied on external commercial heat treatment service providers. Rising costs of these services, limited production capacity availability, and the risk of delays prompted the company to decide to build an in-house heat treatment department.”
Tvornica plinskih turbina d.o.o. operates in a sector where process quality has a direct impact on the quality of the final component. The company’s history dates back to 1975, when it began operations as a specialized plant manufacturing jet engine and gas turbine components. From the beginning, it developed competencies in advanced technologies, including those based on Rolls Royce licenses. In the years that followed, it implemented, among other capabilities, precision forging of turbine blades, production of components for tank and helicopter engines, turbine components for the power sector, and parts for engines used in civil aviation.
The equipment ordered has a working space of 600 x 600 x 900 mm (24 × 24 × 35 in.), while the round heating chamber also enables the processing of oversized components. The furnace has been designed to operate with two gases: argon and nitrogen, and is equipped with a high-performance cooling system with a blower enabling gas quenching up to 6 bar abs.
“In the aerospace and turbine industries, a vacuum furnace is a solution that provides process repeatability, cleanliness and safety. In this project, the customer chose the Vector furnace because it needed proven first choice technology that would allow a critical production stage to be moved in-house. This provides greater independence, better quality control, and a shorter path from component production to final heat treatment. Vector furnace lines operate for the largest manufacturers in the aerospace sector. They are present in more than 70 countries — there is probably no better recommendation,” says Maciej Korecki, Vice President of the Vacuum Furnace Segment at the SECO/WARWICK Group.
As most heat treaters know this week sees the two largest heat treat shows of 2026, “Furnaces North America” in Indianapolis, IN, USA and “HK26” the European heat treat show in Cologne, Germany.
Because of this conflict Jordan Montgomery of “The Monty” headed west to “FNA” and Gord Montgomery headed east to Cologne, Germany.
As it turns out the trip to Cologne was interrupted by a very interesting visit to “Hertwig GmbH” one of the larger commercial heat treaters in Germany and a heat treat which bears the distinction of processing more heat treat orders in a single year than any other heat treater on the continent-a true fact.
This family owned business was founded in 1993 and now has two locations in Germany with the main one being in “Lüdenscheid”, the facility which Gord Montgomery and Joern Rohde of furnace builder “Rohde” visited October 12th.
One of the most recent additions which caught our eye was a very new, automated sealed quench (batch IQ) line provided by Ipsen of Kleve, Germany. In total, the system has 3 high heat furnaces each with larger than average working dimensions (in particular height) and multiple tempers, washers and 2 endothermic generators.
The first part of the install was completed in 2019, with an additional furnace added in 2020 with further additions planned for the near future.
While we all hear stories about the industrial slowdown in Germany, it would appear that Hertwig, by a lot of foresight has found business to be good-mainly because the firm has a customer base covering many industries and because of their continuing investment in new, state of the art equipment.
How does the company compare to other European commercial heat treaters in terms of annual sales? That is not a question we can answer with certainty but we can say that with two locations and over 100 employees it is will certainly rank amongst the 10 largest in Germany and in the top 20 in Europe.
As we speak the largest heat treat show of 2026 in North America “Furnaces North America” (FNA) is being held in Indianapolis, IN and Jordan Montgomery of “The Monty Heat Treat News” is in attendance. To start things off Jordan sent us this photo and write up about one of the exhibitors, furnace builder and commercial heat treater “Vac Aero International”.
At the Furnaces North America show, Gary Younger and Nathanial McCollins of Vac Aero International met with Remus Bica of IVAC Group and Jordan Montgomery of “The Monty Heat Treat News” to discuss where the thermal processing industry is headed next.
From next-generation heat treatment technologies, maximizing intelligent uptime solutions to supporting the aerospace and power generation platforms of tomorrow, the discussion focused on innovation, partnership, and long-term growth.
The Monty will continue to provide more updates on the ongoing show.
