Monday Morning Briefing
We will start off with a bit of “people” news. First up we see that Jesús Gerardo Calderón Reyna recently became Vice President of Operations at ALD TRATAMIENTOS TERMICOS SA DE CV in Mexico. ALD TT (Thermal Treatment) is a commercial heat treater specializing in vacuum carburizing and Jesús has been with the company a number of years now. If you would like to know more about the company and their future plans we refer you to an interview we very recently did with the Senior VP of the company, Dr. Klaus Loeser https://themonty.com/project/
Where are they now-Dirk Otto. For 5 years Dirk was Chief Sales Officer for furnace builder Ipsen in Kleve, Germany before parting ways with the company in 2019. It would appear that he has a new position, completely unrelated to the heat treating industry. Nitrex whose name is known around the world for their nitriding systems has appointed a new representative in Turkey, the press release is below. We will add that we are looking forward to some comments from the company about their recent acquisition of vacuum furnace builder GM Enterprises. “NITREX WELCOMES NEW MANUFACTURER REPRESENTATIVE, MR. UTKU INAN Nitrex Metal is pleased to announce the addition of Mr. Utku Inan as the newest manufacturer representative of its global sales network, serving Turkey. Inan has a 18-year history with the heat treat industry, beginning his career at Tamçelik Heat Treatment Company. He has deep knowledge about heat treatment applications including vacuum treatments, austempering & martempering applications, induction surface hardening, carburizing, material selection, failure analysis and of course nitriding. He had also many different roles at Turkish Heat Treaters’ Society (MISAD) for 10 years including vice presidency.”
COVID 19 Updates. Many of the commercial heat treaters in the US remain open and surprisingly enough busy (the exception to this would be the auto industry and those heat treaters which service it). For instance Metlab in Wyndmoor, PA has this to say; “We are working at full strength and are quite busy with customers engaged in power generation, oil drilling, medical instruments and the like.” Two other examples include Vacu Braze in PA and Stack Metallurgical Group headquartered in Portland, Oregon. The companies have this to say; “Vacu Braze is committed to the fight against COVID-19. We believe that in times of difficulty American ingenuity can lead the way. Our team and facility are positioned to move faster, create stronger results, and support new challenges. In an effort to support the ongoing work to mitigate the damage of COVID-19, Vacu Braze is offering FREE and expedited heat treating of parts made to fight the global pandemic. This includes medical components, 3D printed or additive manufactured parts, tooling, molds, ventilator parts, or anything associated with fighting the spread of the disease.”
“The full resources of the Stack Metallurgical Group are available to any manufacturers supporting our efforts against the COVID-19 pandemic. Capacity for the processing of any medical and/or ventilator components, 3D printed/additively manufactured parts, tools and dies, or anything else related is immediately available. All capacity that we can offer is available free-of-charge to our manufacturing partners. Our team of metallurgists and engineers are also available to provide any knowledge-based support.” We recently visited Stack and have this photo.
We have all heard about how hard hit Italy has been with the COVID 19 virus. Francesco Pieropan of furnace builder Meapforni in Italy tells us this; “The virus made the Italian government decide to close all heat treaters for almost 1 month from the beginning of March. All activities were shut down to protect employees from possible infection. Only a few could run a very small production to continue feeding agricultural and food industry supply chain. Next week probably some more companies will be cleared to restart production but again with less personnel (in order to maintain social distance) and only for some specific industrial fields. The target is to restart economy step by step, protecting involved people and maintain a high level of safety and human distancing. For the months of April till the beginning of May this will be the rule, while all citizen not involved in these activities have to remain at home.”
In happier news, furnace builder Nutec Bickley whose ad appears on this page is celebrating 40 years in business. Nutec is best known for their ovens and Aluminum Drop Bottom Ovens, as an example we have this photo from a visit a couple of years ago. “February the 18th 1975 marked the first day in the life of Nutec Group, a family-owned company that over time has become a recognized leader in the world of industrial heating and high-temperature insulation. Throughout the intervening period, the company has experienced several different transformations, some of them prompted by tough times, but mostly in its drive to grow and keep positioning itself as a key player in the international markets. And so here we are in 2020, with Nutec Group celebrating its first 45 years – and this is a celebration that includes all our associates, whom we are proud to call the ‘Nutec family’. Across all our facilities, the teams came together to mark this milestone, in the process sharing anecdotes, memories and talking about their long-term vision for the company.”
An example of a commercial heat treater temporarily closing down because their automotive customer has closed would be Paulo in Mexico (Paulo is the second largest commercial heat treater in North America https://themonty.com/project/largest-north-american-commercial-heat-treats-august-2019/ ). “Operations Update – Monterrey Division; As the coronavirus continues to impact business around the world, at Paulo we are continuing to monitor the situation in each of our locations. Maintaining the safety and health of our team members enables us to provide thermal processing services to our customers and is of utmost importance. We are working closely with our customers to update forecasts and understand their needs over the coming weeks and months. We continue to focus on social distancing and hygiene in addition to adopting temperature taking and other policy and procedure changes to protect our team. As a result of our Monterrey Division’s customer base ceasing operations temporarily, we will suspend operations of our Monterrey plant effective April 6th. We plan to resume operations on May 4th to coincide with our customers returning to work. We are working with the team members at our Monterrey location to continue work from home when possible and to ensure a smooth transition as we resume work in early May.”
We have all heard about how hard hit Italy has been with the COVID 19 virus. Francesco Pieropan of furnace builder Meapforni in Italy tells us this; “The virus made the Italian government decide to close all heat treaters for almost 1 month from the beginning of March. All activities were shut down to protect employees from possible infection. Only a few could run a very small production to continue feeding agricultural and food industry supply chain. Next week probably some more companies will be cleared to restart production but again with less personnel (in order to maintain social distance) and only for some specific industrial fields. The target is to restart economy step by step, protecting involved people and maintain a high level of safety and human distancing. For the months of April till the beginning of May this will be the rule, while all citizen not involved in these activities have to remain at home.”