We are very pleased today to be speaking with Mr. Gary Gariglio, founder, owner and CEO of Induction Heating Specialist “Interpower Induction”. First off Gary, congratulations on this being your 30th anniversary of founding the company. Perhaps you could tell us how you got started all those years ago?

Thanks, Gordon. Yes, 30 years has gone quickly. After graduating from Michigan Tech University in electrical engineering, I was hired in 1987 by American Induction Heating Corporation. There I was involved in service and support of equipment, lab projects, sales, and coil build and repair. In 1992 American Induction was bought by AJAX Magnethermic and I continued to work for Ajax up until 1995.

I started Interpower Induction in 1995. We started off very slowly with a rented facility in Imlay City. In 1998 we purchased our first factory in Almont, Michigan. In 2001 we started Interpower Induction Services.

In 2005 we purchased an 80,000 square foot factory across the road in Almont. This is now what we refer to as Plant 1 World Headquarters. In 2012, we purchased Plant #2 Almont which added another almost 50,000 square feet. We established Interpower Induction, LTD. in England in 2010 to serve the United Kingdom and Europe. In 2011 we purchased 50% of a fabrication shop in Michigan called Kinross Fab & Machine.

In 2014, we started Interpower Induction in India. Just recently, this year, in 2024, we started Interpower Induction Mexico. This year we purchased KVA Induction and Jo-Mar Industries, which will be merged to form a coil inductor facility in Fraser plant 2. We now have eight manufacturing facilities and a sales and service operation in Mexico. So we’ve grown quite a bit in the past 30 years.

If I could piggyback off that question, starting in a rented facility 30 years ago, now penetrating the biggest heat treat markets in the world, international, acquiring companies, could you have imagined this happening 30 years Ago?

We had what we thought were lofty goals in the beginning. We wanted to hit $20 million in sales in 20 years. We did better than that which was a surprise. So I would have to say NO we would not really have imagined the success that we’ve had. We’ve been very fortunate. We’ve been in the right place at the right time. We’ve introduced very innovative products, and we have very good employees. Today, we employ more than 300 people and we keep moving forward.

Let’s talk about the company, please tell us about Interpower – mainly what products do you offer?

So Interpower has a niche business in induction heating machines. A large market that we serve is what we refer to as the mass heating market. We are specialists in heating bar, billet, tube, wire, plate, and those machines can be very large. With large power machines often in the Mega (millions) watts, and I would say we’re the leader in the world in this market. We do a lot of tube and bar hardening (Q&T Quench & Temper), stress relieving, normalizing. 

What about markets by industry? Automotive? Aerospace? General Industry?

So one of the things I love about what I do is that we’re really involved in any market that uses metal. We are into hand tools, motorcycles, ATVs, cars, trucks, agriculture, aerospace, oil and gas. Anyone that uses metal in their process, we’re probably involved with them. Personally, I’ve enjoyed going out to each of these industries, seeing how things are made, seeing the volume that these things are made in is amazing.

We are not tied to a single industry. Throughout the 30 years, we have had very few down years. You might find oil and gas is down, but big vehicles are selling like pickup trucks. However, if oil prices are high, there’s a lot of activity in the fossil fuel exploration, but that might affect the sales of large trucks. We have seen a balance that has allowed us to stay profitable during down turns in market segments.

Based on your experience in the past 30 years, is there a particular industry that you enjoy the most or you see the most growth potential in?

I’ve seen a lot of innovation in manufacturing. That is fun to me to be involved in the leading part of a new product. So, for example, we’ve been involved in developing processes for, say, new tools – tools that aren’t yet on the market. We’ve been involved in innovations in the auto industry. We are involved in electric cars and charging. We’re involved in crystal growing. We’re involved in the conversion of waste to new products. There are all kinds of new things that are not yet even to the market that we’re involved with, and that has made for an interesting career to me.

Because there are international locations, you do a lot of business outside of North America, but in terms of India, UK, Europe, Mexico, what region is the fastest growing area for Interpower in particular?

Our fastest growing region has been India. We started from zero in India about nine years ago and today we have over 100 employees in India. This location primarily serves India but they also Turkey and Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. 

When most people think about the heat treatment market, they think atmosphere or vacuum with induction as an afterthought – sorry, but that observation is a personal one based upon many years in the industry. If we start off with this perhaps incorrect assumption where does Induction fit in? Is there a perfect product for Induction as an example?

Well, I think induction heating has advantages in the application of automation. If you consider the heat treat industry, our machines are used in production process and used in a Cell. There are often a large number of processes required to make a single part. The part might be formed, it might be machined, it might be then induction hardened, clean up and final assembly. Parts do not leave the area to be processes in another room or location.  I think induction heating is easy to automate, and we supply the automation from material handling, including saws, inspection equipment, and robotics.

This question fits in with the one above to some extent-is induction more energy efficient than other types of heat treating-let me elaborate. You don’t just start up an atmosphere furnace, process a few parts and shut it down. Induction heating though is “instant on/instant off” for lack of a better term. Does this make Induction then more energy efficient than atmosphere or vacuum furnaces?

Induction heating is a very efficient process. It’s an electrical process, so when you’re not running, it is consuming a negligible amount of energy when sitting idle. When it is running, the machine is operating efficiently. Similar to an electric vehicle, the operating efficiency is very high. I can’t really comment compared to a furnace and its efficiency. They really are 2 different technologies and each fills a need.

You hear a lot about Co2 emissions these days, is this a selling point for induction? Granted it really depends on how the electricity is being generated but do you get customers telling you they are considering induction because of no emissions?

I think it is a good point for induction. We have seen our business really grow and we have seen people make efforts to switch over to electrical processes. At Interpower, we have also embraced more electrical processes not just because we’re an induction heating company, but we also think that there are cost advantages. For example, we installed roof top solar on four of our plants totaling 1,000 kW. This investment will give us a quick payback.

Other companies are also looking to control and reduce their cost of energy and induction allows for that. You may have seen the electric induction stoves that are on the market? Those induction cook tops have actually brought some visibility to our market. More people now understand what induction is. These people then try to apply it to their own business. We’ve seen that happen, and we’ve built induction heating systems for very large vessels for chemicals, paints, foods, oils, greases, etc. I think that people are looking for options versus conventional heating like gas or steam heating. So yes, I think people are looking for alternatives and more efficient alternatives.

Is it a crowded market, meaning are there a lot of “quality”, “established” players in the field?

There were quality and established players when Interpower started. When I started my career there were about 20 induction heating companies in the United States. That has since been reduced to just several of us in the USA. We always wanted to offer something that was better, that had features that others didn’t offer — and that had selling advantages. I think we drove innovation. I think our power supplies quite innovative.

In 1995, we started with IGBT technology (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) for inverters. Most companies were still producing SCR inverters. Today we manufacture IGBT and SiC (Silicon carbide) for power conversion. I think we really led the way in our power supplies. We started selling one, two, three inverters a year. Right now on our production floor, we have over 75 inverters in manufactured right now.

We started off innovating in power conversion, and that has continued to be a strong advantage for us. Without a good inverter, you really have a hard time with any of the processes. We build up to 10 Megawatts in a single machine. We build at frequencies from 100 to 300,000 Hertz. We have a strong product mix.

When I visited you a couple of months back you had an induction system like no other I have seen before – are you able to share any information about that project? Along the same lines perhaps you could tell us what your favorite project has been.

Well Gordon, I’m not sure which one you’re referring to. You may have seen one of our large bar quenching temper systems at our Plant 2? We shipped a machine that was about 300 feet long, 60 feet wide. I think it was a total of about 42 trucks to get it to the customers site. Those machines will stress relieve, quench, temper and normalize bar. That machine was doing 1-inch to 4-inch bar, 65-feet long, and we’re processing tons per hour in that application.

You may have seen our induction temper furnace? This machine is a unique induction innovation. We are tempering parts using induction in a furnace type configuration. We’ve also innovated in heat treating processes, both in lift and rotates and in scanners. 

This is an unfair question I know but one which I always like to ask as it can lead to some very interesting thoughts. What is the future of Induction either in terms of market share (growing, shrinking) and new possibilities? Is there anything in your world that suggests a “renaissance” era for Induction?

Well, in my career, I’ve been blessed to see nothing but growth. I think the induction business has gotten bigger and I think it will continue to get bigger. What’s next? I mean there’s been a lot of innovations in power conversion. I think that there will be many new induction machines designed and developed in the future. Induction really, relatively is not that old if you think about it. In the late 1960s, early 70s, this was really the start of solid-state power conversion. You’re really seeing what I would say is the early induction heating industry, and you will see a lot of new things come out of our industry for many years to come.

Gary, I thank you for your time and what I would truly like is to talk with you again in a couple of years to see what Interpower is up to. 

Thank you Gordon and The Monty!