Komatsu Investing in New Heat Treat Department, Overton Chicago Gear Has a New Heat Treat Manager And More Heat Treatment News

For our Monday Morning Briefing for October 19/2020 we start off in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. To begin we will use this press release which appeared just a couple of weeks ago; “Building on its 135-year-legacy in Milwaukee, Komatsu Mining Corp. officially broke ground earlier this month for its new state-of-the-art headquarters and manufacturing campus in Milwaukee’s Harbor District on east Greenfield Avenue. The company recently finalized the acquisition of two parcels of land totaling nearly 57 acres for the project. Partnering with the State of Wisconsin and City of Milwaukee, Komatsu is investing approximately $285 million in its South Harbor Campus, which will include purpose-built, modern manufacturing facilities; advanced technology, robotics, engineering and R&D labs; a large office complex, training facilities, a data solutions center and an experience center.” When this project was announced back in 2018 one of the details emphasized by Komatsu was that this new project would include a state of the art heat treating facility. We can confirm that this is the case and while we can’t provide details at this point we can say that the heat treat portion of the project is certainly moving ahead.

Moving on to the Chicago area we have this brief update about the new Bodycote facility in Elgin, Illinois, USA which we have mentioned in the past. This note doesn’t tell you much, hopefully in the future we can provide more details; “Bodycote’s facility in Elgin, Illinois, replaces an aging Melrose Park facility. The site will support manufacturing supply chains in the Midwest, and the Melrose Park facility will close once the transfer of customers’ work has been completed. Classical Heat Treatment North America President Tom Gibbons says, “Our investment in the new facility enables us to expand our capacity and improve our ability to deliver high-quality heat treatment capabilities to our customers.” Bodycote has more than 70 locations in North America.”

We now move on to Switzerland for this note from furnace builder Codere (whose banner ad can be found on this page). “During these challenging times Codere has obtained orders for two installations in Europe for our System 250 modular batch lines. These installations have been installed with our latest HT View software which has been developed to meet current and future customer demands. Also the final photo is our new nitriding furnace developed internally for nitriding & nitrocarburising processes with hitech atmosphere control settings. For further information on our latest product range, please contact www.codere.ch & you can contact [email protected]

“Italy’s TAV Vacuum Furnaces received an order for two horizontal vacuum heat-treatment furnaces from a leading global energy company. The equipment will be used for the production and maintenance of gas turbine components used to generate power from natural gas. The furnaces have useful dimensions of 48 inches wide x 48 inches high x 72 inches deep with a maximum charge weight of 4,850 pounds and peak operating temperature of 2360°F (1293°C). The equipment’s configuration enables quick and easy loading of different volumes using a customized TAV loading truck.”   

Isn’t this a really cool picture of a new furnace installation? It is Rohde furnace just installed in Bremen, Germany and this is what the builder has to say; “This fully automatic Bell Hardening Center (BHC 50/60) has been delivered and installed in Bremen, Germany at Leibniz-Institut für Werkstofforientierte Technologien – IWT. The main purpose of the system will be process development in the field of gas carburizing. Especially in the field of gas distribution, temperature uniformity and energy efficiency the furnace sets new standards.”

In the UK, Vacuum & Atmosphere Services feels the need to brag about a new Ipsen vacuum furnace installation they just did-good for them. “Delivered this week, VAS have completed the installation of a brand new Ipsen VacTreater horizontal vacuum furnace. Purchased at the beginning of 2020, the Ipsen VacTreater vacuum furnace is the first VacTreater vacuum furnace to be sold within the UK. With a compact design, high versatility & maximum flexibility, the Ipsen VacTreater vacuum furnace has a quench performance of 12 bar cooling pressure.”

In people news we see that Brian Bishop very recently became Heat Treat Manager at Overton Chicago Gear in Addison, Illinois, USA. Overton Chicago Gear is a gear manufacturing company which heat treats their own products in house and also does some commercial heat treating. Brian is obviously a very experienced fellow having worked with companies such as Bodycote and Diamond Heat Treat in Rockford, Illinois.

In more people news we recently learned that Ludovic Chouraki is now HIP Manager at Accurate Brazing in Greenville, SC, USA. Ludovic knows his stuff having worked with furnace builder Ipsen in the past. Most recently he was Maintenance Manager at Accurate. Accurate has got a really nice set up as you can see in this picture.

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