​A regular feature of “The Monty” is our articles profiling manufacturing firms which do in house heat treating, today we feature an Australian company by the name of Sutton Tools. The best background from the company comes directly from their website  https://www.suttontools.com/

“Sutton Tools manufactures cutting tools at two sites across Victoria, both for the domestic market and for export. The bulk of general production occurs at our head office site at Thomastown, in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, with more specialised operations centred at our Maryborough facility. We also have overseas production plants in Auckland, New Zealand, and in the Netherlands.

Sutton Tool’s state-of-the-art production processes begin with raw material preparation. High-speed steel is imported from France and Austria, as Sutton Tools has found the quality of this European-manufactured steel is superior to raw material sourced from Asia. This steel is processed to workable length & diameter, then turned, using computer controlled machines that are able to complete a number of turning operations in a single manufacturing stage.

While Sutton Tools supplies tools to a broad spectrum of industries – including general manufacturing, electronic manufacturing, automotive, medical, mining and power generation – most advancement in material technology it experiences are occurring in the aerospace, defence and oil/gas industries. The development of so-called ‘super alloys’ for these sectors is constantly pushing material performance boundaries. However, the tougher these materials become, the tougher the tools need to be to work the new generation of alloys.”

Sutton does their heat treating through a division by the name of Surface Technology Coatings located adjacent to the manufacturing facility in Thomastown, a suburb of Melbourne. The heat treating department consists of 3 large Abar Ipsen vacuum furnaces with quenching up to 12 bar and an Ion Nitriding system. While Surface Technology Coatings is dedicated to heat treating and coating tools for their own production they also offer commercial heat treating and claim they have the only commercially available Ion Nitrider in the country which we have no reason to doubt. Interestingly enough the Ion Nitrider is a “NitroPlas”, a brand or name we are not familiar with. These photos give you an idea about Sutton’s products and also a view of the heat treating department. We can say it is clean, well organized and certainly portrays an image which Sutton should be proud of.