“Gasbarre Thermal Processing Systems recently met and partnered with Humberto Bastidas from Thermal Technic Furnace Solutions. Current and future customers can now experience the benefit of having a local Mexico resident that speaks Spanish and prides himself on providing the best possible customer service he can.  Humberto has many years of experience in the heat treating field and market place and is a welcome extended addition to the Gasbarre team!  Gasbarre will be working with Humberto and his team to launch a Spanish version of Gasbarre.com in the coming weeks and will assist with other marketing efforts in that region.  Please join us in welcoming Humberto Bastidas to the Gasbarre family.

Located in St. Marys, PA, Gasbarre Thermal Processing Systems has been designing, manufacturing, and servicing a full line of industrial thermal processing equipment for over 40 years. Gasbarre’s product offering includes both batch and continuous heat processing equipment and specializes in Temper, Tip Up, Mesh Belt, Nitriding, Box, Car Bottom, Pit, and Vacuum Furnaces as well as a full line of replacement parts and auxiliary equipment which consists of atmosphere generators, washers, quench tanks, and charge cars. Gasbarre continues to service and support Sinterite brand equipment and custom designs and manufactures thermal processing equipment to meet customer’s specific needs.

For more information on how Gasbarre can manufacture custom-engineered heat treating equipment solutions for your specific thermal heating requirements, please contact Mark Saline at (814) 834-2200 or via email at [email protected]. You can also visit our website at www.gasbarre.com and find us on LinkedIn (Gasbarre Products Inc.), Twitter (@gasproinc), and Facebook (Gasbarre Products Inc.).”

Back in early October of 2019 we had a news item about how Regal Beloit  in Valparaiso, Indiana might be closing. According to local news sources (below) it has been determined that the plant will close at some future date. It’s a real shame to see a company which produces such high end parts, in this case helicopter bearings close down. They are mentioned here because the facility has a fairly large in house heat treating department which includes several batch IQ furnaces, freezers and a reasonably large vacuum heat treating department.

“VALPARAISO, October 15;  Wisconsin-based Regal Beloit Corp. and the union representing workers have reached an agreement about the closing of a helicopter bearing factory in Valparaiso. According to our partners at The Times of Northwest Indiana, the decision will cost between 160 to 170 workers their jobs. The company decided to close the plant after workers went on strike this summer who were upset over wages and out-of-pocket healthcare expenses. The workers are members of the International Association of Machinists Local 2018. The publication reports workers went on strike in June and then decided to end the strike in late August after Regal said it would close the plant so the two sides could resume negotiations. But the only agreement that was reached was on the terms of the closing, according to the Times. The publication says Regal Beloit has not yet determined when the factory will close. The company says workers can apply for open positions at their plant in Monticello or any other Regal facility. “Regal is, unfortunately, still moving forward with closing the plant,” International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers spokeswoman LaToya Egwuekwe-Smith said. “However, they have not yet said when. An effects agreement covering severance and benefits was reached with the company and approved by the membership.” The factory, which ran for more than 100 years as McGill Manufacturing, was acquired by Regal Beloit five years ago. It provided bearings to helicopter makers like Sikorsky Aircraft and Bell Helicopter.”

We start off our Monday Morning Briefing for December 11, 2019 with people news starting with Mary Springer of commercial heat treater Thermtech in Wisconsin, USA. “At their October 2019 Meeting in Vancouver, Canada the Metal Treating Institute (MTI) recognized Mary Springer from Thermtech in Waukesha, WI with the Heritage Award. The Heritage Award is MTI’s most prestigious award. The Heritage Award is given to a MTI member in recognition to the individual with a lifetime commitment to the betterment of the heat treating industry with one or more notable accomplishments. MTI President, Pete Jamie Jones from Solar Atmospheres stated during the award ceremony, “When it comes to our industry, Mary is a tireless volunteer who cares deeply about making a difference and serving where needed. Over her career she has made a big impact on the MTI as well as our Foundation. She exemplifies what being a difference maker looks like in the heat treating industry.” Only 13 other people have received the MTI Heritage Award since 1933. Thermtech has been a MTI member since 1985. MTI would like to say “Thank You” to Mary Springer for her commitment and work in the heat treating industry.”

Chuck Gee recently became Vice President Sales and Marketing at California Brazing out in California. Chuck comes from a heat treat background having worked with companies such as Bodycote and HiTech Metallurgical over the years. Going through our notes we found this news item about California Brazing which dates back to January of this year; “JANUARY 2019 POSTING Trive Capital Partners Acquires California Brazing. Well we now have our first acquisition in the North American commercial heat treating industry for 2019. An equity firm by the name of Trive Capital just announced that they have acquired California Brazing with two locations, California Brazing in Newark, CA and Nevada Heat Treating, located in Carson City Nevada. Both locations were owned by Rich Penrose, a very well known individual in the North American heat treating community. It has been pretty common knowledge for some time that the company was for sale with rumors suggesting that buyer to be an equity firm but this is the first definite news. Sales for the two locations are estimated to be in the range of $25 million USD per year.”

In Poland Mr. Chris Fita recently became Plant Manager of the Bodycote location in Rzezow after spending several years with the company as Sales Development Manager. This facility is fairly new, having been built in 2015 as you can see in this press release from that year; “JUNE 2015 POSTING. Bodycote, the world’s largest thermal processing services provider, recently opened a new heat treatment site on Wroclaw, Poland as part of its expansion strategy in Eastern Europe. Building on this investment Bodycote today announces its intention to open another Greenfield heat treatment site in the aviation valley close to Rzeszow, Poland. The new facility will support the manufacturing supply chains in this region and is expected to be operational by second half of 2016. Initially, vacuum heat treatment, vacuum brazing, and nitriding will be offered. Other processes will follow as demand for heat treatment services in the region continues to grow. Additional customer supporting services are likely to include HVOF and plasma coatings, vacuum oil quench and aluminum heat treatment. The new facility will hold international quality standards including Nadcap and AS 9100, as well as OEM approvals. First-tier suppliers to United Technologies Corporation (UTC), Rolls-Royce and SAFRAN, among others, will be supported.”  

We now move to Upstate, New York, USA to see what Mr. Gregg Bixler is up to. Gregg has worked with family owned Elmira Heat Treat for over 25 years now, for most of that time as Facilities Maintenance Manager. Very recently we see that he was promoted to Assistant Plant Manager. Gregg is one of the more competent Maintenance people we have run across in the industry so we have no doubts but that he will do a great job in his new position.

Now this is quite a furnace isn’t it? It has appeared on the used equipment market in North America and comes out of a closed down Aerojet Rocketdyne facility in the US. Apparently it was built by Abar Ipsen back in 2002 and is a model HR-120 X 152 VC which means it has working dimensions of 120″ X 152″ long-6 bar quenching. Its quite a furnace and looks to be in very good shape but how it actually works we can’t tell you as it is a design we are not familiar with. We can tell you that it will be going to auction soon and we will have all the details, along with details about the auction getting rid of all of the equipment at what once was the Bluewater Thermal facility in Kitchener, Canada.

And speaking of big furnaces how about this one? This has been built by French furnace builder BMI for a customer in China who will use it for vacuum annealing and stress relieving of titanium alloy large welded parts. Capacity is 10,000 pounds.

To round things out for the week we have this interesting write up about Härtha Hardening Industries in Weissenburg, Germany;

As you can see below we have been able to visit several of the  Härtha Hardening Industries (commercial heat treating) locations around Europe over the course of the past year. A visit to Germany last week gave us the chance to see the company’s location in Weissenburg, which was the first time for us.This particular facility was founded in 1997 and works closely with their sister facility in Cadolzburg (founded in 2008) which is 70 km away. The two plants have a total of 92 employees headed by managing director Mr. Thomas Bückert which makes this a fairly good sized commercial heat treatment plant. This particular plant in Cadolzburg is quite specialized with a number of Plasma Nitriding furnaces, combined with vacuum furnaces and gas nitriding systems – all designed to serve the automotive, medical and extrusion die industries. It’s a pretty cool plant, absolutely immaculate and one of the largest Plasma Nitriding locations in Germany We see in these photos Mr. Mario Neuwerth who is the plant manager (dark sweater) along with Joern Rohde of ROHDE Schutzgasöfen GmbH and Gord Montgomery.

 “JULY 5/2019; Regular readers of “The Monty” will be aware that over the course of the past year the name “Härtha Hardening Industries” has been popping up with increasing regularity in our news items which is really no surprise as we ranked the company as one of the larger commercial heat treaters in Europe https://themonty.com/largest-european-commercial-heat-treaters-february-2019/ After recent visits to their HÄNDLE location in Tübingen, Germany and their SABO plant in Boxtel, The Netherlands we had the opportunity just last week to see their headquarters in Aldenhoven, Germany where we learned more about the company as a whole which makes for a rather interesting story;

​The HALEX Group, managed by the Halex Holding, Germany has two divisions; Halex Extrusion Dies and Härtha Hardening Industries- combined the company has 14 subsidiaries with a total of 550 employees, all based in Europe. As usual our interest starts and ends with the heat treating portion of the business, Härtha Hardening. The company entered the commercial heat treating business as a family business in 1993 with a facility in Weissenburg Germany and over the years other locations have been added including HÄNDLE in Tübingen, Germany (2016), SABO in Boxtel, The Netherlands (2016) a greenfield expansion of Härtha in Verona, Italy (2018) and the acquisition of Forte in Stollerg, Germany (2018). The end result is a total of 9 independent heat treat shops in 4 countries.

​Now that we have covered the Group as a whole let’s have a look at the Aldenhoven location We would consider the plant to be larger than the average commercial heat treat in Europe with over 50 employees, a production floor of 1,625 m2 and sales of over 6.5 million Euros annually. The focus of this plant is largely on vacuum hardening and gas nitriding, though also offering various other processes And our impression-well these photos tell the story. A nice clean modern shop, with clean, quite new equipment-impressive in short and we look forward to seeing some of the other Härtha locations in the future.”

Yesterday we had two photos which were taken at commercial heat treat Paulo in Cleveland, Ohio, USA during their open house to showcase their brand new Quintus HIP (Hot Isostatic Press System) system. The “Hipping” process reflects a small but growing trend in the commercial heat treatment industry in North America with several companies entering the market in the past year. In July of this year we had a news item about this project and the company overall-this can be found below but at this point we can share a little more information with you. Currently this plant has a total of 41 furnaces, 35 of which are vacuum furnaces. The building expansion which is mentioned below and can be seen in one of the photos below will allow the company to install 12 more vacuum furnaces in the years to come as well as another HIP system. Overall the company invests over $10 million USD back into the company on an annual basis. You can see why this company has grown and prospered since it was started in 1943.

“JULY 2019 POST And Speaking About Hot Isostatic Pressing-Paulo 

It’s always interesting to see trends developing in the industry and certainly the expansion of Hot Isostatic Pressing in the commercial heat treating market can be considered a trend (although with the initial cost of the equipment being quite high we certainly do not expect Joe’s Bar & Heat Treat to be entering the market). Last year Paulo announced that they were investing in the technology and the company has kindly provided us with this update about the installation.

“Exciting news from Paulo’s Cleveland Division where the Hot Isostatic Press has been delivered and is currently being installed. The furnace arrived after a long voyage from Sweden where it was built by Quintus Technologies. The modular elements as well as the pressure vessel and yoke are being set in place currently.  The installation is on schedule and the vessel is slated to be ready for production early September. The 30,000sqft expansion to house the HIP vessel is complete and will provide the Cleveland Division room for additional expansion to support customer needs. Rigging is nearly complete as the many large components are set in place, the heaviest is the yoke, weighing in at over 80,000lbs. The yoke contains the vessel while under pressures, which can reach 30,000 psi. Also pictured are the power and pumping modules which form the structure around the vessel. Paulo is excited to add HIP to its service offerings especially in light of the recent growth of additive manufacturing.

“Many of the products we heat treat are HIP’ed prior to us receiving them, adding HIP allows us to be a one stop shop for many customers as well as growing our presence in the world of Additive Manufacturing,” said Phil Harris, Marketing Manager. Installation and startup will continue for several weeks with both cold and hot testing and training to be completed by September. The construction of the expansion is nearly complete as seen below. Founded in 1943, Paulo is one of the largest providers of thermal processing and metal finishing solutions in North America. Headquartered in St. Louis, Paulo operates six divisions servicing the Midwest, Great Lakes, and Southeast regions of the United States and northern Mexico.”

​

Mr. Johan Hjärne, Sales Manager, Quintus Technologies, Mr. Ben Rassieur, CEO, Paulo

“Wisconsin Oven is pleased to announce the shipment of two (2) Electrically Heated Multi-Zone Curing Ovens to the composites industry. These ovens will be used to cure carbon fiber threads. One of the curing ovens has six (6) zones and is rated for 250° C (482° F). and has work chamber dimensions of 19’0″ wide x 16’4″ long x 2’0″ high. The second oven has two (2) zones and is rated for 260° C (500° F) with work chamber dimensions of 19’0″ wide x 41’4″ long x 2’0″ high. Guaranteed temperature uniformity of ± 5° C @ their respective maximum temperature ratings was documented with a profile test for both ovens.”

​Earlier today commercial heat treater Paulo (who we have rated as the second largest commercial heat treater in North America https://themonty.com/largest-commercial-heat-treats/)  had an open house to celebrate the ribbon cutting ceremony of their brand new Hot Isostatic Press System, at their Cleveland, Ohio plant. Jordan Montgomery from “The Monty” was in attendance and has provided these photos-we will have more details about this event along with more photos Friday of this week.

Based in Austria the Aichelin Furnace Group is amongst the largest furnace builders in the world so it is rather odd to see that the spare parts/service department for the company is located in another country-Germany to be exact. Since 2004 the Aichelin Service Group has been based in Ludwigsburg, Germany which is near the major city of Stuggart-at this point some background is in order. When the service group was formed the logic was that the service and spare parts department of any company can become secondary to that of building new equipment, hence the decision was made to set up a completely separate company, “Aichelin Service Group” near the city of Stuggart which was where Aichelin originally started and where many of the company’s installations are located. Since that time the service group has grown and prospered, so much so that it now had annual sales of 45 million euros and employs 140 people around the world with 80 people in this location alone. At some point in the past the decision was made to provide spare parts and service for any brand of furnace which means today the group spends 20-25% of their time on competitors equipment. It’s an interesting concept and one which we have run across a couple of times recently although this sounds like the first example since it dates back 15 years now. In this photo you can see a couple of the people responsible for this success; Mr. Stephan Mueller, Head of Product Development, Carsten Stoelting, CEO of Aichelin Service Group and Gord Montgomery.

We are rolling out our last few photos from the recent “Heat Treat 2019” exhibition in Detroit, Michigan.

Greg Pope and Paul Cairney of South-Tek Systems with Aaron Ackerman of Met Pro in Michigan

Jordan Montgomery, Heat Treat Central

Ryan and Jeff McLaughlin, Ben Tackett, McLaughlin Furnace Group