We received this rather interesting press release from SECO/VACUUM about a record-breaking contract they recently received-the details of the press release are leading the team at “The Monty” to engage in a little speculation.
According to this press release the customer appears to be a commercial heat treater with multiple locations in North America. Later this week “The Monty” will complete our list of the “50 Largest Commercial Heat Treaters in North America-2024”-you will see that less than 10 commercial heat treaters in North America fit the bill of having multiple locations and vacuum capacity.
We leave our readers to come to their own conclusions as to who the end customer is.
“SECO/VACUUM Awarded Record Breaking 9 Furnace Contract; SECO/VACUUM, a division of
SECO/WARWICK Group, awarded the largest contracts to date for the division.
Fabrication has begun for three Vector® Vacuum Furnaces and six Tempering Furnaces with supporting auxiliary systems. They will be going to a returning heat-treat partner who is already operating twelve SECO/VACUUM furnaces at their various locations throughout North America. |
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These furnaces are a continuation of the heat-treater’s strategic planning to modernize all their facilities from atmospheric heat-treatment to vacuum processes which offer cleaner, safer, more cost-effective operation while also allowing for finer process control and a reduced carbon footprint.
The Vector® is a single-chamber gas quenching vacuum furnace using high pressure quench (2 to 25 bar) which can be applied to a wide variety of heat-treating processes and applications, including hardening, tempering, annealing, solution heat treating, brazing, and sintering. It provides important capabilities for producing high uniformity in heat treated parts, high consistency in workloads, and high speeds in batch processing with low consumption of power and process gases. These particular Vectors will be used primarily for hardening.
Tempering is a process primarily used to increase the toughness of hardened ferrous-alloy parts. The tempering process is typically applied after a hardening process. SECO/VACUUM’s line of Tempering Furnaces is designed for quick and efficient atmospheric tempering. Convection heating allows this tempering furnace to reach process temperatures and conditions, enabling smoother heat-treat process flow at an often-congested stage of the overall heat-treat process.
To maximize process throughput, they chose to order six tempering furnaces to go with their three Vectors because, while the Vector is capable of tempering as well, for optimum throughput two dedicated tempering furnaces are required to keep up with the relatively shorter hardening cycle of a single Vector.
Each of the 9 units, Vectors and tempering furnaces alike, are front-loading, horizontally configured furnaces with a 36 x 36 x 48 inch working volume and a 3300 lb. capacity.
Heat-treating operations will have to shut down entirely during the modernization changeover.
To minimize disruption and get the heat treat partner back up and running as swiftly as possible, in addition to providing the furnaces, SECO/VACUUM will also serve as the general contractor, overseeing the installation of the new furnaces, auxiliary systems, wiring, piping and ventilation needed prior to commissioning and operator training.”
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