A long time reader in Michigan posed this question to us earlier this week; “Hello Gord, I hope all is well and that the current crisis is not hindering you too much.   Do you know who has the largest pit FNC/Nitride unit in the world and who manufactured such?”

It is a very fair, interesting question and we don’t have a definite answer, however these are our thoughts. Nitrex has installed some monsters out there but personally the largest I have ever seen or heard about are at a heat treater in Remscheid, Germany by the name of Härterei Carl Gommann GmbH who has pit gas nitriders. The largest diameter one is 13’ and the deepest is 37’. These were built by a German company by the name of KGO who has furnace installations around the world. In the one photo we see on the left Harald Roth of KGO and on the right have Volkher Diehl of Härterei Carl Gommann GmbH. 

We will stress that that these are the largest pit nitriders we are aware of but probably there are larger ones out there somewhere. If anybody has any suggestions we are all ears.