Earlier this year we mentioned how Kamax a German manufacturer of high strength fasteners for the automotive industry was setting up their first facility in Latin America-Leon, Mexico to be exact. Well just last week the facility opened for business (a local press release is below). As always this caught our attention as the company does a great deal of heat treating in house, all of it or the vast majority in continuous furnaces. In the case of the plant in Mexico this meant the company brought a surplus mesh belt furnace from a facility in Europe. In one of the photos below taken during the inauguration you can actually see the furnace in the background. The company also has a number of continuous furnaces at their locations in Michigan, USA and has for some time been considering adding more heat treating capacity.

“León.- Kamax, a company of German origin, officially opened its facilities yesterday at the Colinas León Industrial Park, thus becoming the first plant it has in Latin America and the twelfth worldwide. According to César González, director of operations, the objective of the company is to triple the production lines and increase the extension of the land within the next five years, 45 million dollars have been invested and 215 jobs will be generated. Kamax is a specialist in high strength fasteners for the GM, Volkswagen, Audi, Boss and Ford brands. Its products are directed to the North American market and also exports some to Germany and Russia, through its customers, the manager said. Currently, it has 45 employees, however the commitment made to the Government is to reach 215 jobs in five years.”

Very recently we updated our list of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America however based upon readers suggestions it is back to the drawing board. While we received several suggestions the most obvious one we missed is Thermal Process Holdings about whom we have this to say; “Thermal Process Holdings was formed by Calvert Street Capital Partners and John Hubbard (former CEO of Bodycote, PLC) to pursue a buy-and-build strategy in the thermal processing industry. The team has a stated goal to build a diversified, professionally-managed thermal processing business generating over $100 million of revenue. TPH owns and operates: P & L Heat Treating in Youngstown, Ohio, Diamond Heat Treat, based in Rockford, IL; Certified Heat Treating, based in Springfield, OH; and Hudapack Metal Treating, based in Elkhorn and Franklin, Wisconsin. https://themonty.com/largest-commercial-heat-treats/

Are you exhibiting at the ASM Heat Treat Show in Detroit this fall? The ASM show being held October 15th to the 17th in Detroit, Michigan is the premier heat treating event in North America for 2019 and your customers need to know that you will be in attendance.  “The Monty Heat Treat News” can help get that message out with a very special offer. For almost a quarter of a century “The Monty Heat Treat News” has been publishing our monthly newsletter which goes to thousands of captive and commercial heat treaters around the globe. As a special for the show we are offering full page ads for $500.00 USD-half of our usual price of $1,000.00 (examples of our newsletters can be found at https://themonty.com/previous-newsletters/ ). We have spots available in both our September 1 and October 1 newsletters as well as some banner ad availability on our website https://themonty.com/

We are proud to say that with over 8,000 subscribers to our newsletter, almost 6,000 LinkedIn followers and over 20,000 visitors to our website each and every month “The Monty Heat Treat News” is the most cost effective and productive forum in the world for getting your message out to the worldwide heat treating industry!

Please let us know your questions. Jordan Montgomery [email protected]

We are very pleased to be able to offer you an interview with Mr. Slawomir Wozniak who very recently became President & CEO of furnace creator SECO/WARWICK. His photo and interview can be found on both our home page https://themonty.com/ and on our interview page https://themonty.com/interviews/mr-slawomir-wozniak-president-ceo-of-seco-warwick/

Item#IQ438 Holcroft Batch IQ Furnace Line; Holcroft Batch IQ Furnace Line.Model GP2500. Serial Number S/N #CJ-4233. Installed new in 1980.  Gas fired,  working dimensions of 30″ X 48″ X 30″ and a capacity of 2500 pounds. Furnace was operational until shut down on 11/30/17 when plant closed. Also included is a double ended charge car (Holcroft) to handle loads of 30″ X 48″and a Holcroft Spray/Dunk washer with heating system 30″ X 48″ X 30″.  Complete, in very good condition and ready to go. Asking Price $60,000 USD

https://themonty.com/project/itemb438-holcroft-batch-iq-furnace-line/

“The largest indexing CAB furnace in North America is being relocated to Cold Shot Chillers in Houston TX to conduct in-house furnace brazing of the company’s heat exchangers. US department of SECO/WARWICK Group  has been selected to relocate a very large CAB line for a customer who purchased it with the intention of brazing their own heat exchangers. Built by SECO/WARWICK for another Houston OEM in 2005, the CAB line will be a first for Cold Shot Chillers, as they have not previously conducted furnace brazing in house. The Indexing CAB furnace has an overall load size of 48” wide x 100’’ long. The entire line, which measures 96 feet, includes a wet sprayfluxer with blow off, load table, dry off (dehydration) oven, entrance/purge chamber, convection furnace, atmosphere air cooling chamber, final air-blast cooling chamber and final unloading table. In addition, there is a  power panel, a control panel and an atmosphere scrubber. The controlled atmosphere brazing (CAB) process heats a product to brazing temperatures while maintaining uniform temperatures within the product in an oxygen-free nitrogen atmosphere. The SECO/WARWICK design allows OEMs and aftermarket specialists the flexibility to produce a wide variety of sizes and types of heat exchangers on a daily basis. The Indexing solution allows a variety of parts to be brazed with no changes to the menus or furnace settings. The engineering team at SECO/WARWICK has the knowledge and experience to manage fleets of heat treating equipment in a planned and professional manner regardless of the equipment manufacturer. The solutions offered by the Group are universal because they are based on best practices and its manufacturing team is available through their global network facilities (USA, Europe, India and China).”

We are very pleased to be able to offer you an interview with Mr. Slawomir Wozniak who very recently became President & CEO of furnace creator SECO/WARWICK. His photo and interview can be found on both our home page https://themonty.com/ and on our interview page https://themonty.com/project/mr-slawomir-wozniak-president-ceo-of-seco-warwick/

“Oak Creek, WI, USA – August 12, 2019 – United Process Controls, (UPC) recently upgraded the vacuum furnace controls and automation platform for Woodward Inc., a US provider of fuel and control systems for aircraft engines. The new generation controls provide streamlined reporting for NADCAP compliance as well as seamless integration with the company’s enterprise planning (ERP) system.

The control upgrades were undertaken at the company’s Illinois facility and completed in a two-step approach. First, three vacuum furnaces – two Abar Ipsen and a VFS – received a full control system replacement based on UPC Protherm 710 controllers. The scope of work also included new digital heating zone trims for temperature uniformity, and multiple PID sets to minimize overshoot and meet tight tolerance requirements. Once the updated controls were installed, the second step was implementation of the Protherm 9800 SCADA and connectivity to the Protherm 710 controllers for real-time visibility of production data, including connectivity to the company’s ERP system. In the latter case, the ERP interacts with Protherm 9800, managing the process recipes and feeding data to the Protherm 9800 to align the right recipe with the part or job lot entering the receiving furnace. This setup provides a redundant check and requires the operator to validate the part number or job lot number via the Protherm 9800 interface before a recipe can be deployed.

In addition to complying with NADCAP, the enhanced controls also meet AMS 2750E specification for thermocouple tracking. Since thermocouples have a limited life span, Woodward had to closely monitor how often each unit was used and manually record data. Now, the Protherm 710 controller tracks the thermocouple, its serial number and usage history, identifies when a thermocouple needs to be replaced based on running hours, days in service and temperatures reached, and alerts the operator when it’s time to change the thermocouple. The Protherm controls also give added benefits such as monitoring and diagnostics for easier troubleshooting. Woodward also took advantage of the Quality Management module available with the Protherm 9800 to centralize metallurgical laboratory reports.

On top of these investments, UPC also equipped a number of new air-drying ovens with Protherm 470 programmable controllers with onboard input and output capabilities. Future upgrades of furnace controls and automation are planned at Woodward, and UPC will be a part of that, supplying Protherm series and Atmosphere Engineering series process controllers and connecting them into the SCADA platform.

Jason Walls, UPC Engineer responsible for the Woodward project preparations and start up, mentioned “The workplace at Woodward is top notch. Their commitment to ongoing improvements is an excellent example of a manufacturer understanding the potential of new technology to drive better overall equipment effectiveness, to maximize furnace availability, and to deliver well-engineered, quality products. UPC process controls and control systems add more automation and real-time visibility of production, which will ensure that furnaces continue to operate at maximum efficiency for years to come and at the same time uphold Woodward’s high quality standards of its operations and products.”

ABOUT UNITED PROCESS CONTROLS

United Process Controls Inc. (UPC), www.group-upc.com, is a world leader in industrial process control and automation in the heat treatment and combustion markets. Operating eight sales and manufacturing facilities in seven countries with approximately 130 employees, UPC is commitment to servicing the thermal processing industry, helping both furnace OEMs and equipment end users make their business more profitable. Our brands include Atmosphere Engineering, Furnace Control Corp., Marathon Monitors, Waukee Engineering and Process-Electronic, and cover an extensive product range of probes, analyzers, process controllers, flow controllers, gas compressors, gas mixers/gas blending systems, flow control systems, as well as production software. In addition to offering a complete selection of process control hardware and software, we are also specialists in engineering complete control solutions for a variety of processes (carburizing, nitriding, nitrocarburizing, and vacuum) from a single furnace installation to large-scale production.

CONTACT

Pat Torok, Vice President Sales & Marketing, Heat Treat North America

[email protected]

6724 South 13th Street, Oak Creek, WI 53154 USA | T: +1 414 462 8200”

Introduction

Gears have nitrided for many years, yet the subject of nitriding of gears is still very controversial, and continues to be so. The process of nitriding is in reality, process technology. Meaning that it is becoming very a favored thermal process technique due to the low process temperature required and no quenching. However, this does not mean any distortion.

Requirements for both design and metallurgy to consider before steel selection and nitriding

When considering the process of nitriding of gears, the thermal treatment of gears requires a very careful selection of the choice of steel in relation to the gear application such as;

Pye Metallurgical nitride training note

Acknowledgement to Industrial Heating magazine

When making the choice for the steel for a gear to be nitrided, it will be necessary to consider at the initial design stage of the gear, the working environmental conditions that the gear will operate under. Some design considerations would be as follows:

Steel mill test certificate

The steel mill test certificate must be confirmed and proved before manufacturing the particular gear. It is not always necessary to check the analysis of alloys, but very important to check the mechanical properties listed on the mill test certificate.

Traditional method off surface treatment of gears

Traditionally gear types have been carburized, quenched and tempered in today’s manufacturing environment. This necessitates high-temperature processing conditions, for the diffusion of carbon into the steel surface. This must be followed by austenitizing and quenching. The obvious net result is the potential for distortion. The distortion aspect will also be influenced by the machining conditions prior to the carburizing. The distortion will be influenced by;

Considerations and methods for the nitride processing of gears

The process of nitriding on the other hand can be accomplished by any of the following nitride process methods;

These processes offer to the engineer, the ability to pre-treat the steel in order to develop the required core hardness and tensile strength. The appropriate core hardness is necessary to support the formed metallurgical case when the gear is nitrided. During the nitride process (and provided that the nitride process temperature is approximately 50° F below the steels core tempering temperature) the core hardness is not affected. There is absolutely no opportunity for grain boundary oxidation during the nitride procedure, nor is there any opportunity for retained austenite conditions, simply because the nitride process temperature is well below any transformation temperatures

The thermal processing industry has become energy consciousness and demands the optimum use of whatever chosen energy utilization is selected.

The loading of the furnace (for whatever process method is chosen) necessitates that the optimum loading is utilized so as to maximize both the thermal energy and the appropriate process gas consumption.

One needs also to consider the available surface area of work to be nitrided

The furnace loading needs very serious consideration in relation to the nitride process method process method chosen. It may be surprising for the reader to learn that the two most effective methods of thermal heat transfer and loading density of nitriding system are:

These two methods of thermal energy transfer from the heat source to the work load are very thermally efficient because of energy conductivity and heat transfer.

Pye Metallurgical International Consulting Training notes

There are exciting developments taking place with the fluidized bed method of nitriding which enables the user to not only nitride, but to diffuse other elements such as aluminum (which is a nitride former) into the surface of the steel and thus increasing the surface hardness. (It must be said at this point, that it is not always a good thing to achieve very high hardness values on gears, simply because if thing here is subject to impact starting, the pressure the gear tooth may well begin to fracture and chip, thus causing serious premature failure)

The selection of the steel for gear manufacture comes down to core hardness conditions and support of the formed case. Some nitriding steels contain aluminium up to 1% in the analysis of the steel. This group of steels does not lend itself to the manufacturer of any type of gear, simply because of the aluminum being a strong nitride former which will result in extremely high surface hardness values.

Potential for Distortion

The other strong consideration for the use of the nitriding process for gear heat treatment is that there is no phase change that takes place in the steel while being heat-treated during the nitriding process.(Providing one nitrides at a selected nitride process temperature which is below that of the steels final tempering temperature).

Because of the diffusion of nitrogen into the surface of the steel, some growth will take place. Once the process cycle has been completed the system is simply cooled down, and no quench is involved.

Further, this means that distortion is not an issue as a result of quenching such as takes place during the carburizing heat treatment cycle.

It cannot be said that no distortion occurs during the nitriding cycle no matter which method has been chosen. Growth will occur as a result of nitrogen diffusion into the steel. However, the amount of growth will be dependent on the case depth selected.

Distortion will occur. The amount of distortion that will occur will still depend on the induced residual stress caused by machining practices of high feed and speeds.

Conclusion

The writer feels very strongly that nitriding has a tremendous growth potential because of the reduction of potential distortion due to low process temperature processing conditions.

Due to the potential of minimal growth occurrence, gear teeth can be machined to an under-size tolerance, and grown into size because of the surface growth that will occur during the nitriding process. A lapping tolerance can be left on the gear to accommodate the final required surface finish.

Sincerely, David Pye

With the recent acquisition of Applied Process by Aalberts Industries of the Netherlands it became necessary to update our list of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America. While were at it we took the opportunity to add one new entry to our list and also make a couple of other changes. The updated list can be found at https://themonty.com/largest-commercial-heat-treats/ We will mention that it is now almost 20 years since “The Monty” put together our first list of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America. This is roughly the 6thupdate to our original ranking and like most things it gets better with age. It’s a difficult task ranking what are largely privately held companies with little desire to share sales figures however after all these years we are quite proud of the accuracy of this list. (note; we are not going to guarantee 100% but, in our conceit, we feel it is possible).  The basic criteria: 

-this ranking is based upon sales figures for 2018

-sales would include plants in the USA, Canada and Mexico (although Bodycote’s figures do not include their operations in Mexico)

-we are only considering companies whose core business is commercial heat treating. As an example, our understanding is that Commercial Steel Treating in Madison Heights, Michigan and their associated companies such as Curtis Metal Treating have sales in the area of $100 million USD per year. However, most of their sales are finishing as opposed to heat treating and for that reason we have excluded them.

-as a publicly traded company we have no issue sharing Bodycote’s sales figures, however we have refrained with all the others on this list.

-while we started off with a “Top 10” list it grew to a “Top 14” list as you can see. The reason being that some of these companies are so close in size that it is difficult to include one and exclude another.

-as always we appreciate comments and corrections and indeed look forward to them