Over the years we at “The Monty” have been fortunate enough to see some of the most memorable heat treatment installations in the world. Today we feature a few which are truly memorable.

Solar Atmospheres of Western, PA has the largest horizontal vacuum furnace we have ever seen anywhere on the planet. In this photo we see Bill Jones, Owner of the company and Gord Montgomery standing inside this 48′ long monster when it first went into production.

While this is an impressive photo it is nothing like seeing it in person. This picture was taken at a commercial heat treater in northern Italy by the name of Grupo TTN and what you are looking at are the deepest pit gas nitriding furnaces we have ever seen. As a matter of fact they are so unique that Boeing sent work to this plant as part of a Nasa program to heat treat components for fuel tanks for rockets. If we remember correctly the pit is designed to handle pit furnaces 80′ deep.

What you are looking at is probably the largest single location commercial heat treater in the world. SHU, in Ulm, Germany has over 500 employees in a single location which features just about every type of heat treating known to mankind. All the buildings in the aerial view are part of SHU.

While we used this photo just a few days ago, it has to be included in a list of the “biggest”. This is the largest batch IQ furnace in the world with salt quenching and it is located at Applied Process in Oshkosh, WI., USA.

This is certainly the largest pit carburizing furnace we have ever personally seen. Located at a company by the name of REESE in Bochum, Germany it can handle parts 17′ in diameter, 17′ high and loads of up to 50 tons.