“Commercial Spring & Tool Company Ltd.” in Ontario, Canada has since 1973 been producing a wide variety of fasteners, stampings and clips, many of which are destined for the automotive market. During this time the firm has largely done their austempering in house, originally in a variety of mesh belt and shaker hearth furnaces. However over the years the company has done less and less in house until early in 2024 the company was down to a single older, mesh belt austemper line.

Due to shrinking volumes the furnace was not running at full capacity which led the company in mid 2024 to outsource all of the work to one of the largest commercially available sources in North America, the heat-treating divisions of furnace builder Aichelin Group. This consists of 2 locations “Atmosphere Heat Treating” and “Austemper Inc.”, both located in Wixom, Michigan, USA. In related news we recently mentioned that Mr. Mike Coburn, formally with furnace builder AFC-Holcroft has just been appointed Business Development Manager for this group.

There are many reasons for manufacturers to either bring their heat-treating requirements in house or conversely outsource their needs, but in this case, it was a fairly easy decision-running a continuous furnace at anything less than full capacity does not make any economic sense whatsoever. 

This photo shows the furnace line as it looked while it was in production early in 2024. 

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