Monday Morning Briefing
We are going to start off in Canada for a couple of news items about commercial heat treating. In the first we see that Exactatherm in Mississauga will be celebrating their 40th anniversary with a barbeque this coming Friday. Exactatherm was founded by Dr. Peter Lidster and the company is NADCAP approved and offers vacuum heat treating, Plasma nitriding and several other processes. In this picture we see the good Doctor alongside Jordan Montgomery of “The Monty”. We will be in attendance at the party and will give you an update.
In Quebec Thermetco has now completed their transition from their original plant to a brand new location. In these photos you can see the old, now empty facility and the new location.
As we often say nitriding is a growing business both gas and vacuum purged which means more and more players are getting into the market. Gasbarre who entered the gas nitriding field a little while back is scheduled to ship a system to Contour Hardening in Indianapolis who is now entering the vacuum nitriding field as you can see in the picture below. (Gasbarre’s ad can be found on this page by the way)
Bodycote, Greenville, South Carolina, USA is justifiably proud of recent approvals at their facility in South Carolina as you can see in this press release; “Bodycote, Greenville, South Carolina, is now Pratt & Whitney and GE Aviation approved for heat treat and brazing. We are excited to serve the rapidly growing additive and aero-engine markets. This location is ideal for supporting your Southeast manufacturing plant.” We recently listed this item on behalf of a company by the name of Qualtech in Denver, Colorado, USA. “Unitherm Industries Pit Carburizing furnace with working dimensions of 36″ diameter X 72″ deep. Model GP3672. Installed in 2015 and in operation until December 2018 when the plant was closed down. Maximum operating temperature of 1850F, maximum load 2,000 pounds. Gas-Fired with Eclipse Thermjet TJSR55.” The furnace was in excellent shape and not that old, however Qualtech (a manufacturing company) had made the decision to exit heat treating and this furnace along with a number of others became surplus. Bottom line is that the furnace sold to a commercial heat treater and all of the furnaces at this plant are now gone.
In China we see that a furnace manufacture by the name of JGEP is bragging about a recent installation they made at a commercial heat treat in Chonqing, China; “JGEF Furnace installed a series of nitrocarburizing furnaces at a commercial heat-treatment company’s recently opened 53,820-square-foot facility in Chongqing, China. The furnaces are designed to maintain temperature uniformity of ±3°C. The series of pit nitrocarburizing furnaces use software that controls the nitriding potential and maximizes the efficiency of the process. The systems are capable of maintaining the preset values of Kn, and the process requires no manual adjustments from start to finish.” The world’s largest heat treat show“Thermprocess” will be held June 24 to 28Th in Dusseldorf, Germany. This event is held every 4 years and we will be in attendance and also taking the opportunity to visit a few heat treaters and equipment manufacturers in Germany at the same time. One company which comes to mind is Halex one of the largest heat treatment groups in Europe and we will be seeing two of their locations. The photo below is from the 2015 event and features the “Solo” (furnace manufacturing) booth.
We mentioned Bodycote, Greenville, SC already but this plant comes up a second time today. Mark Haran a long-time heat treater who has worked at companies such as Braddock Metallurgical and Bodycote for quite some time was recently promoted to Production Manager in Greenville-good for Mark.
And to round things out we have this recent photo of Mr. Marco Marchetti who up until a couple of years ago was a very well known individual in the European heat treating industry. Mr. Marco Marchetti was the Chairman, CEO and majority shareholder of Swiss company Accu Holdingswhich amongst it’s different divisions included Italian furnace builder CIEFFE. Due to some legal issues Marco parted ways with the industry and while we don’t know what he is up to these days we have this recent photo of him. Marco is on the left in this picture.
