In November of 2022 Dale and Gord Montgomery had the priviledge of visiting commercial heat treater Phoenix Heat Treat in Phoenix, Arizona, USA-our summary can be found below. Today we are able to give you an update about the company adding more furnace capacity. As we speak the company is taking delivery of a completely rebuilt, like new “Super 30” batch IQ furnace originally built by Surface Combustion of Maumee, Ohio. The rebuild project, which was done by McLaughlin Furnace Group of Avilla, Indiana consisting of replacing all alloy, controls, flowmeters and burners with brand new components which were tested before delivery. The furnace will compliment existing Surface batch IQ furnaces already in place. This photo shows Charlie and Pete Hushek standing in front of a new endothermic generator again provided by McLaughlin.

“NOVEMBER 21, 2022. Phoenix Heat Treat Gives “The Monty Heat Treat News a Tour”; As previously mentioned commercial heat treater Phoenix Heat Treat gave “The Monty Heat Treat News” a 5 star tour of their facility this past Friday, a tour which we have been looking forward to. As the largest commercial heat treater between San Diego, CA and Dallas, Texas, USA we were anticipating a fairly large facility with a number of processes and we were not disappointed with what we saw.

Founded in 1963 by the grandfather of the current President, Mr. Pete Hushek the company now has 67 employees and a very substantial facility. Arizona is not known for a large manufacturing base which means Phoenix (NADCAP accredited by the way) by necessity offers a wide variety of thermal processing capabilities including aluminum heat treating, carburizing, gasnitriding, vacuum hardening, annealing, austempering and martempering-have we forgotten anything? If so the full list is available at Phoenix Heat Treating – Quick Quote – We provide tighter process control with higher quality at lower costs (phoenix-heat-treating.com)

What is striking about the company is the knowledge which has been passed along through several generations of Huskeks. In 3 hours of speaking with Pete we learned more heat treat industry tricks than we have learned in the past 5 years. A phrase which he used caught our attention as something we should remember it goes like this; “Metal is not very smart but it has a mind of its own in terms of its characteristics which means you have to trick the metal into doing what you want”-Pete went on to use some very interesting examples which could only come from years of experience. Pete’s son Charlie who is General Manager has quite obviously absorbed this knowledge from his father.

Phoenix is currently on a very strong growth curve which includes recent additions such as a larger drop bottom oven installation for processing aluminum, another very exciting addition which the firm is looking at includes-well we will have to leave that for a future date.

When we quizzed Pete and Charlie about what they see in the future for heat treating they were unanimous in saying that additive manufacturing is creating some very exciting opportunities, opportunities which are still being explored. Charlie added that he has always felt that the heat treatment industry is too secretive in terms of the processing and that more transparency in the industry would benefit both manufacturers and commercial heat treaters a sentiment which we would agree with.”

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