In addition we have these photos from our recent visit along with a photo from the ALD booth at the HK22, Heat Treatment Exhibition in Cologne, Germany held last week.

“The Monty Heat Treat News” has also learned that recently the company received two very nice orders in the USA. Both orders were for large ModulTherm vacuum carburizing systems and both are destined for automotive companies in the US.  

Our host, Dr. Klaus Löser, Senior Vice President, R&D and Process Development, ALD Vacuum Technologies GmbH showed us that ALD is more, far more than simply a supplier of heat treatment furnaces. Klaus very kindly provided us with this summary of the company itself, as well as an explanation about the various pieces of equipment on the floor.  ALD Vacuum Technologies – Hightech is our Business (ald-vt.com)

In addition we have these photos from our recent visit along with a photo from the ALD booth at the HK22, Heat Treatment Exhibition in Cologne, Germany held last week.

“ALD moved out of the center of Hanau, Germany to a new location in the Fraunhofer Science Park in Hanau in 2016 where we have approximately 450 employees. Since that time ALD has step-by-step enlarged this new facility. The last step was done in 2019, when a new research and development center was erected. It consists of an office area (2,500m2) hosting ALD´s research department and a 2,000m2 lab area, which is ALD´s research and development center where several metallurgical and heat treatment systems are installed.

The furnaces in the laboratory are not lab size but industrial size furnaces allowing us to do production size tests and process development together with our customers or industrial and university partners. The systems are:

• An EB-melting furnace with 600 kW max. EB-gun power used for melting of reactive and refractory alloys like Titanium, Zirconium, Tantalum, Molybdenum, Tungsten, Niobium etc, up to temperatures of more than 3.000°C.
  
• A SyncroTherm® unit for vacuum hardening/casehardening of components for the automotive industry including gas quenching. This machine is designed for one-piece flow or small batch production offering highest quality especially with respect to distortion. ALD is equipped with 3D geometry measuring equipment allowing us to do distortion analysis and optimization very fast and effective.
• A ModulTherm® system is about to be installed comprising of 2 treatment chambers offering 20 bar quenching capability with Nitrogen or Helium. The system will be used for customer trials but also for internal and national/European R&D projects.
• Newest system (EBuild®850) is going to be the world´s largest Additive Manufacturing system working with EB-PBF (Electron beam powder bed fusion) process. Focus for this machine will include aerospace and energy industry. The build area is 850 x 850 x 1000 mm3 (L x W x H) and will for the first time allow to produce additive manufactured turbine components on an industrial scale. The materials to be handled range from Titanium, Titanium-alloys, Titanium-Aluminides, Ni-base-alloys and all kind of reactive and refractory alloys. ALD is now in a unique position to offer systems for the complete product production-chain including melting, re-melting, powder atomization, additive manufacturing and final heat treatment.

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Dr. Klaus Löser, ALD, Gord Montgomery, “The Monty Heat Treat News”

Gord Montgomery, “The Monty Heat Treat News”, Joachim Boss (VP Heat Treatment), Ben Kahle (VP R&D Heat Treatment), Roman Becker (Product Manager Heat Treatment)