Monday Morning Briefing
This news item about 3D printing appeared in Industrial Heating last week. While we don’t find it particularly interesting from a heat treating aspect it made for some interesting conversation at the Heat treat exhibition in Detroit last week-specifically the conversations revolved around whether any furnace manufacturers were seeing much furnace demand from suppliers of 3D printing systems-the answer is a resounding no. Not a single major furnace builder reported any sales from suppliers of 3D printing systems. While we do know of two furnace builders that are providing small sintering systems that seems to be about the extent of it. We are starting to think that 3D printing will be like wind power furnaces in North America, a great deal of promise initially which at the end of the day fizzled out. “Kennametal Inc. formed a 3D-printing materials and production business unit, Kennametal Additive Manufacturing, as part of its Infrastructure segment. Kennametal Additive Manufacturing combines the company’s expertise in materials science and wear-resistant solutions with additive-manufacturing capabilities to supply high-performance metal additive powders and fully finished 3D-printed parts for wear, erosion, corrosion and high-temperature applications. The new business unit is already shipping production parts to customers. These high-performance wear components include parts printed with powders specifically designed and optimized for 3D printing.” Last week we this news item about commercial heat treater Cascade Metallurgical out in Kent, Washington; “36,690 Square Foot Heat Treating Facility for Sale Near Seattle, Washington. Cascade Metallurgical, a Pacific Northwest based heat treating company, has elected to sell their facility located in Kent, Washington. The concrete tilt-up building offers 36,980 square feet sitting on a fully fenced 1.53 acres. Specialized improvements to the property include an upgraded 5” high pressure natural gas feed to fuel 15 furnaces, 2,000 amps of 480v 3p power, and purpose-built air and heat handling infrastructure.” Just to clarify it is the building for sale NOT the business.
In people news we see that long time heat treater Barry Dunham was recently promoted to Regional Operations Manager for Bodycote. Barry has been with Bodycote for a number of years and most recently was General Manager of the facility in Oklahoma City, USA. We wish him the best of luck and have no doubt but that he will thrive in this new position. November 6th of this year commercial heat treater Paulo will be having an open house at their Cleveland, Ohio facility to showcase their brand new Quintus HIP system (Paulo is the second largest commercial heat treater in North America https://themonty.com/largest-commercial-heat-treats/) During the open house the President of the company Mr. Ben Rassieur will be giving what we are sure will be a very informative talk. Paulo bills this as a “state of the art” facility, having visited it several times over the years we would agree.
Speaking of HIP systems out on the west coast of the USA Stack Metallurgical is getting close to having their Quintus system up and running. We believe the open house will be November of this year and we are hoping to attend the ribbon cutting. Stack is the largest commercial heat treater in the US Northwest and has a very impressive operation. The “Heat Treat 2019” is over and we still have a ton of photos to show you. We are going to space them out over the next couple of weeks, here are several.
Jack Kalucki, Lilia Jasso (Nitrex Queretaro office), and Paul Gofas.
Steve Pfeiffle (Inside Sales), Tim McCormick (Service Technician), Danny Woodring (QRM/ISO), Tony Stoeger (System/Products Engineering Manager), Connor McDermott (Project Engineer), Lee Miles (Service Technician), and Frank Pietracupa (Head of Engineering NA).
Jerram Dawes and Mike Handscombe (PhoenixTm), Gord Montgomery
Jordan & Dale Montgomery, Eduard Lassel, Roland Weeske
