In 2022 “The Monty Heat Treat News” announced one of the largest new furnace orders in North America, an investment by Castool Tooling Systems which included numerous vacuum and nitriding furnaces (a summary can be found below). This investment begs the question; “Why invest millions in bringing heat treatment in house as opposed to giving the responsibilities and headaches to a commercial heat treater”?

“The Monty Heat Treat News” has always felt strongly that bringing heat treatment in house is about control rather than dollars. In other words manufacturers bring heat treat in house to shorten turn around times and control quality as opposed to saving a few dollars. EXCO (parent company of Castool) recently released their Second Quarter Financial results for the period ending March 31, 2023
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/04/27/2656999/0/en/Exco-Results-for-Second-Quarter-Ended-March-31-2023.html. In these results the company very clearly states their reasons for bringing heat treatment in house, these can be found below and make for interesting reading.

Castool Heat treatment operations – Situated within our existing Newmarket Large Mould facility, initial operations began in the Spring of 2022 and the last of the major equipment was installed in April 2023. This facility provides unmatched capabilities, particularly for larger tooling components and enables the insourcing of Castool’s and Large Mould’s heat treatment needs. Additional benefits of this operation include: eliminating shipping and scheduling conflicts with third party suppliers, shorter lead times, increased quality control, and a reduction in the Company’s environmental footprint. – Extrusion group Heat Treatment – added new heat treatment equipment to its plant in Mexico to eliminate outsourcing, increased capacity in Texas, and replaced equipment in Markham with new energy efficient equipment. All equipment is now operational.

“MARCH 29th, 2023; Captive Heat Treater Completes Installation Of Mammoth Heat Treat Department; Castool Tooling Systems, based in Uxbridge, Canada, designs and manufactures production tooling systems for the extrusion and die casting industries. For the extrusion sector, the company pioneered the fixed dummy block, thermally stable container, single cell die heater, and other innovations.

Recently, Castoool completed the construction of a new facility, in which the company has installed of heat treat and nitriding furnaces – providing the plant with some of the largest capacity equipment in North America.

“We perceived there was a shortage of quality heat treat and nitriding sources in North America to support the Tooling Revolution we are
experiencing,” said Paul Robbins, president of Castool. “Both die cast presses and extrusion presses have increased in size and pressures. We are being required to manufacture shot sleeves, stems, and liners in larger diameters and longer lengths than ever before. It is best to heat treat these items vertically and to guarantee best structure with a vacuum quench up to 12 bar.”

The new facility includes several heat treating and tempering furnaces from Ipsen, which is capable of vertically heat treating dies up to 90 inches tall or 20,000 lbs. This includes:

An Ipsen 6 bar heat treating furnace capable of processing pieces up to 36 x 36 x 48 inches in size, or a 3,000 lb load An Ipsen 12 bar heat treating furnace capable of processing pieces up to 48 x 48 x 72 inches in size, or a 6,000 lb load An Ipsen 12 bar heat treating furnace capable of processing pieces up to 60 inches in diameter x 90 inches tall, or a 20,000 lb load An Ipsen tempering furnace capable of processing pieces up to 36 x 36 x 48 inches in size, or a 3,000 lb load An Ipsen tempering furnace capable of processing pieces up to 48 x 48 x 72 inches in size, or a 6,000 lb load The nitriding equipment was supplied by Nitrex. The new vacuum nitriding furnace includes with nitrocarburizing capabilities and can nitride pieces up to 61 inches in diameter and 98.5 inches high, with a load capacity of 14,000 lbs.

Castool’s ISO 9001 certified heat treating and nitriding facility operates according to most automotive standards. The company’s in-house laboratory capable of microstructure and chemical analysis, strength and reliability testing, and nitride layer evaluation.”

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