We will start off today in Brazil with a press release from our good friend Marcio Boragini, General Manager of UPC Marathon in Brazil. Marico tells us that Metalúrgica FEY, located in Santa Catarina, Brazil and one of the largest manufacturers of fasteners in the county just added a very large endothermic generator to their in house heat treating department. Marcio has this to say; “The first characteristic that stands out from the generator is the size, probably one of the largest in operation in Brazil, I don’t remember seeing any bigger ones. Many companies have greater generation capacity but are divided into several smaller generators. This generator has a capacity of 200 m³ / hour (approximately 7,000 CFH) of endogas, divided into 2 heating chambers.”

Remember the Abar Ipsen vacuum furnace that sold at an auction in Colorado last week? As it turns out it was bought by a manufacturer in Colorado who will use it to heat treat their own products but who also plan on running some commercial work. Makes  sense as the largest commercial heat treater in the state, Metal Treating & Research closed down in 2018  which means quite a bit of the work is sent out of state to be heat treated. The funny part of the story is that the owner of the furnace, Colorado Mill Equipment sold the furnace for $91,000 USD which is more than they paid for it just a year ago.

We now move to commercial heat treater Metlab in PA, USA who have a new Vice President. Metlab has the distinction of having some of the largest pit carburizing furnaces in North America. “Metlab Appoints Chris DiMascio Vice President of Operations. Metlab Heat Treat has a long history of success, providing heat treating services to a wide range of industries. To ensure continued success and to elevate Metlab’s quality and efficiencies, the company recently hired Chris DiMascio as the Vice President of Operations.

“My goal is to strengthen the core business from an operations perspective,” remarks DiMascio. “Processes need to be solidified, and new ones need to be put in place. This includes having the right people working on the right things. To accomplish this, we will be implementing Lean principles throughout the organization. The first year will be the equivalent to “polishing the apple.” As an example, we are already beginning to establish ownership and accountability throughout the organization.”

Mark Podob, Metlab’s President and Owner comments, “His work with us over the past few months has resulted in many major improvements to our operation. We are looking forward to the great experience that he brings to Metlab as we seek to grow our heat-treating operations.”Mr. DiMascio has over thirty years of broad experience (including plastics, metals, and chemicals) in engineering and operations. He was most recently principal of OpX partners, his consulting firm, and prior to that COO of the Process Technologies Division for Johnson Matthey Inc., a British company with nine facilities worldwide. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA in Business Management from Penn State University.”

Jeff Carr, a very long time Bodycote employee has now retired. Jeff worked in the Central USA division for 32 years most recently as a General Manager in Arkansas. In this photo we see Jeff in the middle and on his right Mr. Tom Gibbons, President of the Bodycote North America ADE division.

In upcoming news we have an interview with Mr. Joern Rohde, President of Rohde Furnaces in Germany in which he talks about salt reclamation systems. This is slated for July 1, 2020, and in the meantime we have this photo of Joern (on the right) at commercial heat treater Troll in Gemany which was taken last year.

Reaching back a few years we have this photo from Dokasan Heat Treating in Anakara, Turkey, one of the largest commercial heat treaters in the country. We bring several continents together when we point out that the owner of the company Mr. Gurkan Gencler is fourth from the left, Matt Cross, of SSi, UK is to his left, then we have Gord Montgomery and Cihan Balaban of Fornax Software, Turkey.