Every Picture Tells a Story Don’t It?

Each of these photos were taken just last week at heat treating departments in the Northwestern, USA and each has a story attached to it-we will tell you the stories later next week and early next week. Along the same lines we expect to be able to report on the heat treating market in Portugal in just a few short weeks, which should make for an interesting change of pace. It will come as no surprise to most that the Portuguese market is quite small when it comes to captive heat treating, but what might surprise many is that Portugal is well know around the world for producing molds and consequently the country has a large number of vacuum furnaces dedicated to heat treating of molds. The largest commercial heat treating company in the country is a firm called “Ramada” which has about 20 furnaces mainly vacuum hardening and vacuum nitriding all of which are from French furnace builder BMI. Ramada has been around for over 75 years and in addition to the vacuum furnaces they also have 3 carburizing and oil quenching. While we at “The Monty” have yet to visit the firm we understand that it is a well maintained and very clean operation.  We will get back to you on heat treating in Portugal.