Earlier this year we had this news item about Lake City Heat Treating in Warsaw, Indiana; “Lake City Heat Treating is pleased to announce the construction of a 6,000 square foot addition to its facility in Warsaw, IN. The company is excited about the expansion, which speaks towards its continued growth in production and expanding its heat treating capabilities. The new building also allows Lake City Heat Treating the space to bring in new machines and equipment, including a new Hot Isostatic Press in late fall 2018.” As an update to this story we now have a picture of the new Quintus HIP unit in position in the new addition along with a comment about the relative size of the furnace; “With a much larger capacity of 2,000 pounds per load, Lake City will be able to expand load sizes and meet customer turnaround requirements.”

“Ferronite Metal Treatment India Pvt Ltd, a leading heating, gas nitriding and poly aimed coating company has opened its new state-of-the-art plant in Chakan Industrial Park, India. CEO Nilesh Pendharkar of Ferronite Metal Treatment India Pvt Ltd, said that the company has been serving customers across in the Electrical, Defence, Oil and Gas, Off Road equipment and Automotive industries for over 20 years. With increasing customer demands and expectations a new larger facility was needed. “The current portfolio includes Commercial Heat Treatment. We are specialised in Gas Nitriding and Poly Aimed (PA11) Coating. We also have patent rights for Nitriding, Nitro Carburising and Oxidation process. “The new plant is spread across an area of 24000 sq ft with an investment of 10 crore rupees which includes a new 1 ton Nitriding Furnace and a 1.5-ton Case Carburising Furnace. This will increase the capacity from 3 tonnes per day to 8 tonnes per day . The new plant will also add on services like liquid nitriding and Case Carburising and Hardening.”

We regret to mention the passing of long time heat treater Danny O’Dell. Danny spent most of his working life in the industry, working as a General Manager of one of the Hinderliter Heat Treat facilities (now part of Bodycote) in the southern USA. We had several dealings with Danny and always found him a joy to work with. John Hubbard who was the owner of Hinderliter for many years describes him as “one of the best GM’s I have ever had the privilege to work with”. Danny will be missed. “Danny was born on September 26, 1944 and passed away on Thursday, December 20, 2018 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, USA. Danny was a resident of Oklahoma at the time of passing. general manager Organizations: Member of the Broken Arrow Masonic Lodge for 34 years Wednesday December 26, 2018 , 1:00 PM at LifeChurch-Jenks St Jude’s Children’s Hospital.”

“CAN-ENG Furnaces International Ltd has been contracted to design and commission a complete large capacity fastener hardening furnace system for a tier one automotive supplier based in Detroit, USA. The contract is the result of CAN-ENG successfully delivering multiple systems to this customer over a twenty year period and supports the capacity increases for the fastener manufacturing company, which offers wire processing, heat treating, coating and packaging services. CAN-ENG was contracted to see through the design and commissioning for a complete high-quality automotive fastener hardening furnace system that closely integrates a computerised part tracking and metering system, pre-washer, mesh belt hardening furnace, oil quench system, post washer, temper furnace, soluble oil system, endothermic gas generator and Level 2 automation system. The contracted system is engineered to produce at a rated capacity of 6,000lb (2,700kg) per hour. This project is currently being processed through CAN-ENG’s manufacturing and is planned for commissioning in Q1 2019.”

Between ourselves and other news sources including the Indianapolis Business Journal, Contour Hardening is getting one heck of a lot of press these days, however we do have to share what we learned when we visited their facility in Indianapolis, Indiana last week. The company was founded back in 1986 by John Storm and Mike Chaplin, former engineers at Allison Gas Turbine (John unfortunately passed away this past year and Mike retired several years ago). The two applied their knowledge of gears to devise a new system for hardening based upon Induction heating which meant that from 1990 to 2000 the company was turning out 10-12 systems per year, all dedicated to gear hardening for the auto industry. 2000 meant a new location (their current one) and commercial heat treating again all based on induction. 2007 brought the facility in Silao, Mexico which now has 26 employees while Indy has almost 60. We speculated that Contour is the largest commercial induction heat treater in North America which is quite possible although they have to be very close in size to Zion Industries, another commercial heat treater. Currently the company’s mix is roughly 80% heat treating and 20% machine building. With 4 metallurgists on staff, multiple engineers and a dedication to customized solutions the new CEO Ben Crawford is planning on continuing with their stated objective of providing customized solutions designed around the part. Trivia time: the company heat treats roughly 21,000 parts per day and the average price of a system is from $300,000 to $3 million USD. A pretty cool place to visit we have to say.

Our friends at commercial heat treater Wallwork in the UK think they are being pretty witty with this news item; “Santa Makes Special Delivery to Wallwork Cambridge for Peter Cookson.Peter Cookson, is delighted with his early Christmas present – a newly delivered, large capacity, SECO Warwick vacuum furnace. It was too big to wrap and keep a secret but Peter was eager to have his photo taken alongside. The furnace should be operational early in the new year. Vacuum brazing has boomed at Wallwork since we established our first dedicated cell for production of complex components, including honeycomb rings and segments, in 2014. Orders for complex vacuum brazed parts are on the up from aerospace, motorsport, medical and other dynamic industries. Completing part of a £2.7 million pound investment by Wallwork, the brand new furnace will boost production capacity to meet demand.”

Certified Heat Treating of Springfield, Ohio, USA was acquired by Thermal Process Holdings on January 2, 2018 and was the second commercial heat treater to fall under the Thermal Process Holdings banner, the first being Diamond Heat Treat of Rockford, Illinois, USA. Calvert Street Capital Partners, Mr. John Hubbard of Bodycote fame, Lewis Lance, Don Longenette and team who form Thermal Process Holdings have been very clear that their goal is a commercial heat treat organization with annual sales of $100 million USD (their vision can be found here https://www.heattreating.com/news/) After the firm’s most recent acquisition, P&L Heat Treating in Youngstown, Ohio we at “The Monty” felt it was time to visit both P&L (who we spoke about last week) and Certified which we visited just this past week. Certified (General Manager, Don Longenette) we would describe as an average sized, full service commercial heat treat operation-the full service description is due to the fact that the company offers vacuum, induction and Batch IQ processing. The batch IQ department has several very substantial furnaces with load capacities up to 6,000 pound each which are a mixture of AFC-Holcroft and Surface Combustion units. It was glaringly obvious to us that there have been substantial changes at the company and that there is a very clear vision at play here-a vision which includes substantial new investments and improvements. You can see for yourself what the company and the team look like in these photos.

Don Longenette, Mike Trimble

Mike Trimble, 45 years with Certified-very impressive! Gord Montgomery

We have run across a very interesting rumor about Italian furnace builder http://www.cieffe.it/en/ Rumor has it that the company has just landed a multi million dollar order from an international manufacturer for one of their facilities in China. The rumour goes on to say that the order includes multiple sealed quench furnaces (Batch IQ furnaces for our North American readers), tempers, washer and ancillary equipment. The rumor goes on to say that this is a fully automated line and that a local partner near Shanghai will be co operating on the project. While this remains a rumour we have little reason to doubt that it is true. CIEFFE is the largest new furnace builder in Italy and one of the larger ones in Europe and is a company which has gone through a number of changes at the management level in the past couple of years. However obviously customers feel comfortable that any issues have been resolved. We`re hoping to confirm this rumour in the very near future.

Solar Manufacturing has successfully completed the installation and startup of a large 100 ton force Vacuum Hot Press that includes a 2-Bar Gas Fan Quench cooling system (GFQVHP) for Refrac Systems’ commercial and aerospace diffusion bonding operation in Chandler, AZ.

Working with Solar’s engineering team, Refrac Systems selected a derivative of the Solar Manufacturing standard HLF-5748-2IQ internally quenched 2-Bar vacuum furnace as the base design. The furnace hot zone was modified to contain a 100 ton load hydraulic ram centered over the zone which is configured to diffusion bond parts up to 36” wide x 48” long x 30” tall. Besides being specifically designed to diffusion bond large plastic injection molding dies, and concurrently quench hardening them, the system is finding applications in bonding advanced superalloy heat exchangers where the quench cooling offers significant improvement on performance.

Norm Hubele, President of Refrac Systems, states: “We really drew on the extensive engineering experience base that Solar Manufacturing has for building large gas fan quench cooled vacuum furnaces coupled with our own vacuum hot pressing experience to build this very unique hot press system.” Along the course of system design and development, a number of new and complex engineering solutions were needed in order to reduce the operational and ownership risks for the new type of furnace system. “Solar’s engineering team really helped out with a lot of great design ideas and manufacturing experience, and the system really contains the most robust and reliable furnace engineering content that both companies could muster.”

William Jones, CEO of the Solar Atmospheres family of companies, notes “Norm put together a team of engineers to design and build this state-of-the-art GFQVHP, and it contains many innovations. Throughout the entire process, Norm personally reviewed all aspects of the design and added considerable insight to the development of this unique vacuum furnace system.”

Solar Manufacturing designs and manufactures a wide variety of vacuum heat treating, sintering and brazing furnaces and offers replacement hot zones, spare parts and professional service. To learn more about Solar Manufacturing, contact Pete Reh, VP of Sales, at 267-384-5040 x1509, or via email [email protected] or visit us at www.solarmfg.com.

For more information about Refrac Systems service operation see www.refrac.com, or simply call: 800-4-REFRAC / 800-473-3722 to contact Norman Hubele or via his e-mail at [email protected].

For our December 17, 2018 Monday Morning Briefing we are going to start off with HALEX Group, in Germany one of the 10 largest commercial heat treaters in Europe. If you recall we recently spoke about the company after visiting one of their plants, HÄNDLE Härterei GmbH., in Tubingen, Germany (photo below). When we spoke about them they had a total of 8 plants around Europe, according to this press release they now have 9 plants; “ARQIS has advised HALEX Holding GmbH on the acquisition of all shares in Forte Wärmebehandlung GmbH from Forte Heat Treatments Limited. Forte Heat Treatment GmbH specializes in the heat and surface treatment of metallic materials with state-of-the-art automated production lines. Forte’s quality standards are geared, among other areas, to the automotive supply industry. With 15 years of experience and around 70 employees, the company generates an annual turnover of more than eight million euros and has established itself stably in the heat treatment market. The HALEX GROUP was founded in 1990 and is a successful German corporate group with two business divisions. The Aldenhoven-based company is one of the leading manufacturers of aluminum extrusion tools and service providers for metal finishing by heat treatment and hardening techniques in Europe. HALEX now has around 460 employees and 12 locations in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Romania.”

By now everybody is well aware that P&L Heat Treating in Youngstown, Ohio, USA was recently acquired by Thermal Process Holdings. It was an interesting enough development that we at “The Monty” visited the company last week and came away with a better understanding of the company and why it was of interest to Thermal Process Holdings. The company was founded 40 years ago by Bill Pociask and since that time has grown into a 25,000 square foot facility with 15 employees and a growth rate which would be the envy of most commercial heat treaters. What would make it most interesting as an acquisition is the equipment and processes the company has to offer, namely several very advanced vacuum furnaces combined with a number of gas nitriders-both of which represent high value, high margin growing technologies. Bill entered discussions with Thermal Process Holdings roughly 11 months ago and has agreed to a one year contract with the company with the likelihood that he will continue to be involved. As a matter of fact Bill told us that he is extremely comfortable leaving the company in the hands of John Hubbard and company and is pleased that the name P&L will remain. We mentioned the equipment-what we saw were 5 quite new vacuum furnaces with quenching up to 12 bar and several pit gas nitriders again fairly new. We found it quite interesting that two of the vacuum furnaces and one of the nitriders (all installed within the past two years) were built by Remix, a Polish furnace builder who we have never run across before in North America. Future plans include a 9600 square foot addition, another vacuum furnace and another nitrider, all of which will be purchased early in the new year. Yes we can see why P&L would be of interest to anybody looking for acquisitions within the industry.

Commercial heat treater Modern Heat Treat in Richland Hills, Texas will shortly be receiving two additional brand new Batch IQ furnaces from furnace builder AFC-Holcroft in Wixom, Michigan which will be #10 and 11 if memory serves us correctly. We are looking forward to a press release with more details in the very near future. Commercial heat treater and induction supplier Indianapolis-based Contour Hardening Inc., has been in the news a great deal recently and has been mentioned several times on “The Monty” with more news to come. However the company has been attracting attention from a number of different sources recently including the Indianapolis Business Journal https://www.ibj.com/articles/71693-indianapolis-based-contour-hardening-has-new-leader-huge-growth-plans It is quite an interesting article and even includes several quotes from Gord Montgomery of “The Monty” which shows it must have been a slow news day. The photo below shows the great man himself, Mr. Ben Crawford, CEO of the company and Gord Montgomery in a photo taken just last week.

Furnace builder/rebuilder McLaughlin Services in Avilla, Indiana, USA is doing well these days as you can see in these photos taken very recently. In the first photo we see Jeff and Ryan McLaughin in front of a partly completed carbottom furnace. The unit is designed for 2100F and has a very unique design in that it incorporates twin cars-it is destined for a captive heat treater in the US.

Paulo, the second largest commercial heat treater in North America just issued this press release about heat treatment of GM High Pressure Dies; “Paulo St. Louis Division gains approval for heat treatment of GM High Pressure Die Casting tooling December 13, 2018 Paulo is proud to announce the recent addition of the St. Louis Division to the approved heat treat sources list for General Motors High Pressure Die Casting Die Insert Material. The St. Louis Division joins Paulo’s Nashville plant on the approval list, which includes only seven approved locations in the US. The document, referred to as AWQ49657, covers approved material providers, heat treaters, and testing labs. Paulo is the only US source with two facilities on the list. The approval list references AWQ49658 which includes the heat treatment specifications for Hot Work Tool Steels for GM High Pressure Die Casting applications. The materials covered in the specification include H-13, 2367, and others. The approval process requires running test cycles and sharing minute by minute furnace information with GM Engineers who validate that the cycle conforms to the specification. Precise furnace controls and well maintained equipment are essential to meeting the specification.”