Top Heat Treatment News Items, Week of August 19th 2024
Each week “The Monty Heat Treat News” looks at our “top 3” Heat Treatment news stories for the previous week. This is determined by the number of views on our website www.themonty.com and also on social media.
For the week starting August 19th, 2024 our top 3 news items were;
“Nitrex Heat Treat Appoints General Manager; Commerical heat treater “Nitrex” recently appointed a new General Manager for their Mason, Michigan, USA facility (to find out how Nitrex compares in size to other commercial heat treaters in North America we would suggest this link https://themonty.com/project/the-montys-50-largest-north-american-commercial-heat-treaters-2024/ Long time commercial heat treater Mr. Steve Fuller was appointed General Manager of this facility just a week ago. Steve has worked with firms such as Nevada Heat Treat in the USA and commercial heat treater Hansen Balk, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.” https://themonty.com/nitrex-heat-treat-appoints-general-manager/
“Global Heat Treatment Market Size; Our good friend Janusz Kowalewski of furnace builder Ipsen recently published this very interesting graph showing the size of the global heat treatment market broken down by captive vs; commercial heat treating and by region. While we don’t know the original source of this graph or what qualifies as “heat treatment” it did certainly catch our attention. Estimates of the size of the industry always tend to get bogged down in a definition of what exactly constitutes heat treating. For instance, in the opinion of Gord Montgomery of “The Monty” carburizing is the purest form of heat treating with all others secondary and estimates of the size of the industry should reflect this. However others would say that annealing of steel plates in a mill should also be considered as heat treatment-guesses at the size of the market always wrestle with this debate.Certainly, we would agree that globally probably 15% of heat treating is done by commercial heat treaters with the % being higher in Germany as an example and lower in India. The global division of market size is probably accurate based on our knowledge the industry and again makes for interesting reading. So, there you go, if the size of the global heat-treating market is ever a trivia question at your local bar you can confidently claim that you know the answer.”
“Why a Vertical Vacuum Furnace? Contributed by IPSEN USA; When you walk into a heat-treating department and see your first vertical vacuum furnace, you’d be forgiven for staring openly at the jaw-dropping sight. There, perched a story or more in the air on metal legs, is a gigantic vacuum pressure vessel. Wires and hoses, pumps and controls—all attached at various angles—could draw comparisons to science-fiction icons like the Iron Giant or the alien spacecraft from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. They are magnificent machines. Awe inspiring. And, most importantly, very useful.Looking Closer – Why Buy a Vertical Vacuum Furnace? Abar Corporation started producing large bottom-loading vertical vacuum furnaces in the 1960s, most notably building the largest of its kind at the time in 1969 with a gigantic 96-inch by 96-inch work zone (pictured above). “Aerospace companies on the east coast started buying multiple Abar vertical furnaces, lining them up in a row to meet the demands of the space race and the growing commercial aircraft business,” said Mark Heninger, Ipsen’s Director of Equipment Sales. By the time Abar and Ipsen merged in 1985, vertical vacuum furnaces had a steady demand. While these furnaces could do just about everything their horizontal counterparts could do—annealing, carburizing, hardening, tempering, etc.—the vertical furnaces could uniquely handle delivering heat and quenching with a high level of control for very large or very long cylindrical parts with varying thicknesses. Picture a cross-section of an aircraft fuselage, or the engine nozzle of an orbital rocket.(COMPLETE STORY AT https://themonty.com/why-a-vertical-vacuum-furnace-contributed-by-ipsen-usa/“