World’s Largest Nitrider?
Recently the commercial heat treating division of “Nitrex” had a press release about installing what is quite possibly the ” Largest Nitriding Furnace in North America”, a picture of which can be found here;
With working dimensions of 4.5 meters (13.5′) in diameter X 3.5 meters (10.5′) in depth and capable of handling loads of up to 80,000 pounds it is certainly the largest nitriding furnace that we are aware of in North America but it pales in comparison with two units located in Northern Italy.
Gruppo T.T.N., (the largest commercial heat treater in Italy) has two pit gas nitriders with the larger having working dimensions of approximately 5 meters (15′ diameter) X 14 meters (42′ deep). The furnaces are so large that when the USA space agency NASA was searching for a heat-treating source in the late 1990’s for their rocket fuel tanks, the only source they were able to find were these furnaces.On a side note, what Nitrex has accomplished with this furnace is very impressive and in the opinion of “The Monty Heat Treat News” it fills a real void in the North American commercial heat-treating industry. When US commercial heat treater “Metlab” closed in 2024 it took a great deal of large component heat treating capacity with it-a situation summarized by “The Monty”, “Metlab HT Closing Giving Gear Suppliers “Headaches”
These photos show the installation at “Gruppo T.T.N.”
“2019 POSTING: ABOUT Gruppo T.T.N./Italy. Last week we had the chance to visit commercial heat treater Gruppo T.T.N., at their headquarters in Nerviano, Italy which proved to be a rather interesting experience. The family-owned group consists of 9 locations, all in northern Italy with a total of 500 employees-now 9 plants and 500 employees would rank the company as one of the largest commercial heat treaters in Europe and even the world for that matter. As far as we can tell there are no processes the company does not have-Induction, Vacuum, Salt, Gas & Plasma Nitriding, annealing, Quench & Temper, Vacuum Carburizing-there is literally not a process we can think of that the company does not have. The only common denominator would appear to be that the company focuses mainly on large parts, however since they also have belt furnaces even this statement is not entirely true. In the lobby there is a rather interesting photo and certificate dating back about 15 years. The certificate of achievement is from Boeing and emphasizes the company’s contributions to the Nasa Space missions when they heat treated components for fuel tanks for rockets, a contribution which required a Boeing team to be on site for 6 months. Mr. Pirovano who founded the company back in 1978 and who is still very active turned out to be a very friendly and open fellow who allowed us to take photos of the entire plant. “