March 9^th of this year Gord Montgomery of “The Monty Heat Treat News” toured the new Solar Atmospheres facility in Chesterfield, Michigan, USA-the details of that visit can be found below. We can now say that the first vacuum furnace has arrived as you can see in this photo. These are the details from Solar;

“The Solar Atmospheres of Michigan Chesterfield facility took delivery of their first vacuum furnace this week. The furnace has a working hot zone of 36” wide x 36” high x 48” deep and can handle workloads up to 5,000 lbs. To power this furnace along with nine other vacuum furnaces, a new 2600kVA transformer was installed. Things are moving along well! We anticipate to be fully operational in Chesterfield by the Fall of 2023!”

“MARCH 9^th, 2023; The Monty Heat Treat News” Visits Solar Atmospheres of Michigan. January 9^th of this year it was announced that commercial heat treater Vac-Met in Michigan had been acquired by Solar Atmospheres. That announcement also mentioned that the 9 existing vacuum furnaces at Vac-Met would be moved to a brand new location in Chesterfield, Michigan.

Armed with this information Gord Montgomery of “The Monty Heat Treat News” visited the existing Vac-Met locations and the new facility with tour guide Bob Hill, President of Solar Atmospheres of Michigan. Based on this tour “The Monty” has a couple of pictures to share with you showing the progress which has been made.

The second picture shows the next furnace which will arrive, this VFS 2 bar furnace has working dimensions of 10’ X 84” X 84” and is currently located at the Vac-Met location in Fraser, Michigan. In front we see Gord Montgomery, Bob Hill and Andrew Cronkright who will be the Production Manager in Chesterfield.

The final photo happens to be our favorite. In it we see Bob Hill in the new plant, a facility which is right on schedule to meet the planned start date of the end of 2023. As you can see Bob is positively beaming at the progress that has been made and rightfully so.

“Chesterfield, MI, January 9, 2023 – Solar Atmospheres of Michigan, formerly Vac-Met, has recently purchased 18,000 square feet of plant space on four plus acres in Chesterfield Michigan. The new building is 20 miles Northeast of the two existing Vac-Met facilities which are currently located in Warren and Fraser Michigan.

Bob Hill, President of Solar Atmospheres of Michigan Inc states, “We are working feverishly in 2023 to prepare and equip this new facility to make it our fifth state of the art vacuum heat treating and brazing facility in the United States. Once all of the electrical, water cooling and specialty gas utilities are installed, we will strategically relocate the nine existing vacuum furnaces to their new home. Additionally, two new vacuum furnaces were purchased from Solar Manufacturing.” Hill continues, “This investment of over $5 Million dollars gives Solar Atmospheres of Michigan the space to locate our valuable employees and equipment under one roof while continuing to grow the Michigan vacuum thermal processing needs.” 

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