The world’s largest heat treat exhibition, Thermprocess being held in Dusseldorf, Germany is rapidly drawing to a close and as it does we present these photos from the exhibition with more to come over the course of the next week. The general consensus? That attendance is down and two heat treat shows in Germany in the same year (the second being our favorite, HK19 in Cologne in October) is too much. Having said that it was certainly very well organized and in our opinion worthwhile. 

Because of the size of the show it can be very tiring. This fellow only made it until noon before he needed a break.

Bill Disler, AFC-Holcroft, Sonja Zimmermann, Berndorf (parent company of Aichelin), Peter Schobesberger, CEO Aichelin

Graphite Materials; CFC provider always has a very strong presence at heat treat exhibitions around the world.

Part of the ECM Sales team including our good friend Dennis Beauchesne in the center.

SAMT Materials & Metallurgy; Gord Montgomery and Mr. Shen Li. SAMT is one of the largest vacuum furnace producers in China and has long standing partnerships with companies such as EMO Cleaning Systems in Germany and Pyradia in Canada.

ION Heat, a well known manufacturer of Ion (Plasma) nitriding systems can be found at most heat treat exhibition around the world. Second from left we have Mr. Andres Bernal, CEO and to his left we have Stephen Sossa.

Let’s have a look at a company which largely does captive heat treating. Harterei Tandler GmbH & Co. KG., is a privately owned manufacturer of gears based in Bremen, Germany. The company produces gears for a wide variety of industries including the aerospace industry. It would be hard to describe them as a large volume company as many of their products are quite specialized and thus tend to have smaller volumes. The company processes 65 tons of work per week through a variety of pit furnaces which have the ability to quench in salt, oil or polymer.

In addition to this facility the company also has another location in Bremen by the name of Kutz & Schulze which is a commercial heat treat operation-more of Kutz & Schulze next week. We leave you today with these photos of the Tandler heat treat department. From the left we see Production Manager, Friedel Heidelberg, Joern Rohde, Rohde Furnaces, Carsten Erasmi, President of both heat treat operations and Gord Montgomery.

Solar Atmospheres recently installed another unique, all- metal hot zone vacuum furnace at its 1969 Clearview Road facility in Souderton, PA. This is Solar’s third all-metal hot zone furnace installation for their climate- controlled room. The additional furnace increases Solar’s capacity for processing sensitive materials such as PH stainless, nickel-chrome based superalloys, titanium, and ferritic and austenitic stainless steels. 

The unique placement of isolation valves, an all-metal moly/stainless steel hot zone, and a stainless steel chamber allows this furnace to attain the level of cleanliness mandated by the demanding aerospace and medical markets.  The ability to achieve vacuum levels lower than 5 x 10 -6 Torr produces clean, bright results without contamination. Additionally, this furnace incorporates Solar Manufacturing’s latest SolarVac Polaris HMI control system for complete process automation.

Jamie Jones, President of Solar Atmospheres states, “The increasing demands for cleanliness levels in critical aerospace and medical applications, and the growth in these markets, paved the way for Solar Atmospheres to add capacity through this investment.” For additional process information, contact Mike Moyer, Director of Sales, Solar Atmospheres, at 215- 721-1502 x1207, or [email protected], and visit www.solaratm.com.

There has been some speculation recently about the new CEO of furnace manufacturer SECO/WARWICK. We can now tell you that it is Mr. Sławomir Woźniak a longtime SECO employee. Sławomir has an electrical background and started his career with SECO 20 years ago as a sales engineer. Over the years he has had a variety of positions with the company including field service and most recently was COO. His career has included 4 years in China and 2 years in India on behalf of SECO. We asked Sławomir if we could expect any major changes to the company now that he is CEO and his answer was that the company has gone through some fairly substantial changes recently and while he plans to continue to make some changes we should not expect anything drastic. He did go on to say that his  stated goal is to make SECO/WARWICK number 1.

We are now at the “Thermprocess” exhibition in Dusseldorf, Germany which bills itself as the largest heat treat exhibition in the world. Held every four years at the same venue in Germany our first thought is that very unfortunately the event this year is being held amongst record breaking temperatures of up to 38C (almost 100F). Over the course of the next few days we have several photos from the show. In this photo we see from the left; Harald Roth of KGO, Don Longenette, and Mr. Andreas Fritz of EMO. Wait a second-Don Longenette? Yes indeed Don who has worked at companies such as Timken and Bodycote is in attendance. We want to say the EMO is one of the foremost companies in the world when it comes to high end cleaning systems and we will be having an in depth interview with him November of this year.

What you are looking at in this photo is a brand new Schmetz vacuum furnace with a capacity of 2500 Kg and 10 bar quenching. We lie a little bit as it has been in operation for a few months now but close enough. Accompanying the furnace is Mr. Ralf Einenkel, Engineering Manager. This is just a teaser as we will have more to tell you about this commercial heat treater next week.

We are getting ahead of ourselves a bit mentioning the October 2019 Heat Treat Exhibition in Cologne, Germany while we are at the Thermprocess show in Germany but October is not that far away. From the organizers of the event we have these notes.

75th HeatTreatmentCongress – Ticket shop launch; The ticket shop for HK 2019 is now online. All attendees can (re-)register on the HK website www.hk-awt.de using their login data, and plan their HK visit.

MatchMaking; Our MatchMaking tool is the perfect way for you to prepare your visit. It enables you to systematically search for exhibitors and products, arrange appointments with exhibitors, bookmark favourites and presentations and create your own personal event timetable using the calendar tool.

Apps for Android and iOS; The updated app for Android and iOS can be downloaded from the store via the direct link on the website, giving all visitors on-site access from their mobile phone or tablet.

Congress highlights; The programme features two absolute highlights on Wednesday morning: The lecture by Dr Stefan Hock on HK’s significance & changes and the materials-science challenges of the future, and the plenary address by communications expert Isabel Garcia on the topic of ‘Thinking cleverly – communicating cleverly’. The conference will start with the basic seminar for professionals on the topic of ‘Case hardening – process and systems technology’, run by Dr Herwig Altena from Aichelin. https://www.hk-awt.de/vortragsprogramm-hk-2019/

The online marketplace; Many exhibitors are already enjoying the features of the new HK website and posting their industry news, product presentations and job advertisements. You too can use this information platform; it’s accessible to all website visitors. https://www.hk-awt.de/marketplace/

The exhibition; Very few exhibition spaces are still available for booking. A current hall plan with free booth spaces marked can be found at: www.hk-awt.de/hallenplan-hk-2019.

In the exclusive Newcomer area, first-time exhibitors can once again showcase their company for a total cost of EUR 3350. The premium-design ‘HK deluxe booths’ are also available again this year. Exhibitors can book a ‘hassle-free package’ that includes everything from booth fit-out, to admission tickets and parking passes.

SABO BOXTEL in the Netherlands (which is part of the HARTHA Hardening Industries Group) has quite a unique business model. Founded a number of years ago the company only recently became part of the HARTHA Hardening Industries Group-in 2016 if our memory serves us correctly. While it is a captive/commercial heat treater the true story goes much further. Half of the company’s business is producing high end, specialized, machined components for industries such as energy, heavy equipment, the paper industry and agricultural equipment. The other half of the company is dedicated to Induction hardening, half for the products the company produces, the other half for any Tom, Dick or Harry who requires high end Induction heat treating. Yesterday we saw roughly 14 induction systems with the ability to harden parts up to 6 tons with a diameter of up to 6 meters (18 feet) which is the largest the company has heat treated. By the way the General Manager, Franka Seijbel is an extremely competent individual who we immediately had a high regard for. These photos tell the story of a rather interesting operation.

It would appear that United Process Controls GmbH probably the largest furnace controls company in Europe has a new sales manager who will be covering all the German speaking areas of Europe. His name is Mr. Tadeusz Swiatek, he is based in Hagen and he joins the company with 15 years of experience in the heat treatment industry. While we personally have never met him we hope to do so this week in Dusseldorf, Germany.