Last week we profiled a successful commercial heat treater in Indiana by the name of “Dependable Metal Treating” and pointed out that while the company was successful for a number of reasons, a substantial factor in the company’s success was that they have standardized on one particular type and model of furnace. Today we look at another successful commercial heat treater which has thrived for slightly different reasons-“Sun Steel Treating Inc.” in South Lyon, Michigan, USA.

Founded in 1958 Sun has prospered over the years, so much so that the company is ranked as one of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America as ranked by “The Monty Heat Treat News” 50 Largest North American Commercial Heat Treats 2021 | The Monty Sun operates out of two buildings totaling 60,000 square feet, located on 5 acers in South Lyon, Michigan just a few miles from Detroit. With 50 employees the company focuses on just 2 heat treating processes, Ion (Plasma) Nitriding and Vacuum hardening (we lied a little bit, the company is also strong in “straightening”) with nitriding contributing roughly 70% of sales and vacuum hardening approximately 30%.

With just two processes the best way to summarize the company is to say that as a commercial heat treater treater the firm can best be described as a specialty heat treater. One of the more unusual features of Sun is that they build their own nitriders and they build them big. As an example the nitriders you find in these photos have a weight capacity of 30 tons each. The same philosophy holds true for their vacuum furnaces with most having a capacity of 8,000 pounds with 12 bar quenching.

Going back to our original statement that most successful heat treats have a formal for success brings us to the fact that while this company has grown for a number of reasons, one of the main ones is that they have focused on just two processes and with both have gone BIG leading to an economy of scale. We will take this opportunity to point out that this is a privately owned company and the owner, Mr. Jim McGuirk has a friendly relaxed demeanour which has lead to a very loyal and long serving work force who seem to generally like what they are doing.

We leave you with these photos of “Sun Heat Treating”.

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Rich Elinski, Sales Representative, Eric Nordin, Technical Sales