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Heat Treat News AP/Suzhou, China. AP in China is part of the Applied Process group of companies based in Michigan, certainly the largest in the world when it comes to ADI (Austempered Ductile Iron) and right up their when it comes to salt processing in general. The company owned by Chip Keough is announcing that this plant has been sold to their two minority partners, Mr. Andy Chan and Mr. David Chang. We know both individuals very well and we have no doubt that they will do a tremendous job of growing the company. Because of the growth in China of heavy truck manufacturing ADI is in high demand and will continue to expand. We went through our file photos and came up with the one below from 2005 which is rather surprising since none of the individuals in the photo have changed in the slightest (except for the guy in the centre). Andy Chen is second from the left and David Chang is second from the right. February 3/2012 "The Applied Process family of companies is happy to announce the sale of our Suzhou AiPu Component Manufacturing Co. (doing business as AP Suzhou) to our minority partners David Chang (Chang Lai Wang), as President, and Andy Chen (Chen Ming Chi), as Vice President. The local Suzhou ADI General Manager will be Bryan Xia (Xia Yong). Mr. Xia has extensive industrial and heat treating experience and received special training at Applied Process in the US. AP Suzhou, in operation for five years, is an ISO certified, world-class Austempering facility located in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China (west of Shanghai). AP Suzhou’s customers include heavy truck & bus, miscellaneous machinery, agricultural machinery, turf care, construction machinery and railroad components. The new company, doing business as Suzhou ADI, will join its sister company Jilin ADI as technical and marketing licensees of Applied Process Inc., working to grow the pie for Austempering in China. The facilities, combined, offer three UBQA-type Austempering lines for commercial processing and the new owners have plans to increase capacity to address the needs of the growing China market. The new owners, Mr. Chang and Mr. Chen, are also the owners of Shanghai Powermax, a producer of industrial heat treating equipment, producing Austempering equipment under technical license to AFC-Holcroft (USA). They introduced Applied Process to the China market in 2004 and have long recognized the opportunity for a high quality Austempering service provider in the Chinese manufacturing community. Applied Process will work closely with Suzhou ADI, Jilin ADI, and its other licensees, ADI Engineering Process and Heat Treatment (Australia), ADI Treatments (UK), and Hightemp (India) to nurture the growing demand for high quality Austempering worldwide. For more information you can visit the Applied Process Inc. website at www.appliedprocess.com" 
 Used Equipment Available. Our used equipment section is complete and up to date and includes some terrific bargains-have a look at what is new. February 3/2012 A few examples include: If you don't see what you are looking for please let us know and we should be able to find it for you. laura@themonty.com  SECO/WARWICK Group, a worldwide industrial furnace and heat treatment equipment supplier and EXPANITE A/S, a ThinkTank technology company from Denmark, signed at the end of January an agreement to be the exclusive supplier of advanced installation technology by SECO/WARWICK for the EXPANITER and SUPEREXPANITER processes developed by EXPANITE A/S.
EXPANITER and SUPEREXPANITER are patented processes for the surface hardening of stainless steel to achieve superior surface and material properties, such as high hardness, extraordinary corrosion and fatigue properties. SECO/WARWICK developed an advanced installation technology based on their longstanding experience and in cooperation with EXPANITE. The heat treatment unit is designed for the integration into the customer's production lines even if the customer has limited heat treating experience. The infrastructure requirements are relatively small. The companies are calling it a plug-and-play approach to heat treatment technology. With the unique process knowledge of EXPANITE and the vast furnace expertise of the SECO/WARWICK Group, both companies are expecting breakthrough successes in the market from this cooperation. The first installations will be installed in EXPANITE's development and customer center in the second quarter of 2012 in Denmark. Ask us for more information: expanite@secowarwick.eu SECO/WARWICK http://www.secowarwick.com.pl / Expanit http://www.expanite.com February 3/2012 Wire Mesh Products/York, PA, USA. We welcome our newest advertiser, Wire Mesh Products of York, PA (banner on this page). Wire Mesh is one of the premium mesh belt suppliers in North America and a heck of a nice bunch of people to boot. If you have an inquiry we would suggest contacting our good buddy, Dustin Carl, VP of Wire Mesh for a quote at 717-848-3620. Tell him "The Monty" sent you. February 2/2012 Business Opportunities. Either because of the shortage of good people available out there (or the tremendous results from advertising on "The Monty"-the latter is what we would like to believe) we are adding positions open ads at a rapid rate including two for today. Do you want results when it comes to filling a position within the heat treating industry? "The Monty" is the most economical, fastest way to fill that position. Looking for a job? Send us your ad and we will put it on the site free of charge for as long as you would like. When it comes to filling positions within the heat treating industry "The Monty" can't be beat! With a readership of almost 20,000 heat treaters/month we will help you fill your position or help you find a job.February 2/2012  Largest North American Commercial Heat Treaters. Recently we put together our annual list of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America http://www.themonty.com/top10largest.htm . While we do claim it is the most accurate list available in the world we have never claimed that it is 100% accurate due to the fact that most commercial heat treaters are privately held and do not release their sales figures to anybody. A case in point is a company by the name of Aerocraft Heat Treating Co. Inc. Where Are They Now? Michael Wiezbowski. If you're involved in the Induction heat treating field chances are you have run across Mike Wiezbowski. A long time Induction "guy" Mike was with a company by the name of MKW & Associates in Rochester Hills, Michigan a smaller company offering help in Induction applications. We lost track of Mike for a bit but recently ran across him again. It turns out that Mike is with USM (United States Manufacturing Corp.), a cold extrusion manufacturer that offers products such as Axle Tube Housings, Variable Wall Tubing and Hollow front and rear axles. From the sound of it Mike has done well (which is no surprise to us) and has the lofty title of USM - Induction Specialist which means he has corporate responsibility for all induction applications at USM which include heat treat and warm form processing at the Warren , Michigan and Mexico facilities. We're pleased for Mike. February 2/2012 Seco/Warwick Supplies Vacuum Furnace for Leading Helicopter Manufacturer. What we see below is that furnace builder Seco Warwick has sold a vacuum carburizing furnace to a helicopter company for heat treating gears and transmission parts. Vacuum carburizing has been a tremendous success for automotive gears and this is now becoming very common for helicopter gears. February 1/2012 SECO/WARWICK S.A. has supplied a vacuum furnace for a leading manufacturer of helicopters for civil and military customers. SWSA has once again applied vacuum carburizing technology (LPC) in the aircraft industry with great success. The furnace is dedicated for low pressure carburizing of gears and transmission parts. Other furnace specification: About the SECO/WARWICK Vacuum Team. The Vacuum Team offers vacuum heat treating furnaces for hardening, tempering, annealing, solution heat treating, brazing, sintering, carburizing, carbonitriding, high vacuum, CVD–graphitizing and degassing. SECO/WARWICK has built some of the largest and technically advanced vacuum furnaces in operation today, developing advanced technologies like Universal HPQ™ (High Pressure Quench), PreNit® & FineCarb® LPC vacuum carburizing, fully automated control systems and modeling software. Vacuum furnace configurations are available for vertical, horizontal and elevator style furnaces. Both cylindrical and rectangular hot zones with metallic or graphite heating elements are available for both new and used equipment. SECO/WARWICK Worldwide provides industrial metal heat treatment furnaces used in a variety of processes for material finishing and component manufacturing applications. We supply furnaces to customers involved with steel and aluminum production, aluminum recycling, forging, automotive, aerospace, commercial heat treating, HVAC/R, electronics, wind energy, medical equipment and nuclear industries.The globally integrated organization includes SECO/WARWICK S.A. (Poland), SECO/WARWICK GmbH (Germany), SECO/WARWICK Corp. (USA), Retech Systems LLC (USA), SECO/WARWICK ThermAL S.A. (Poland), SECO WARWICK Allied Pvt. Ltd. (India) and SECO/WARWICK RETECH Thermal Equipment Manufacturing (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. (China). The company is an industry leader in industrial heat processing equipment and processes. For more information, visit www.secowarwick.com.pl Controls Service Inc./Dearborn Heights, MI. Controls and Calibration company Controls Service Inc. in Michigan is pretty proud of their new look. February 1/2012
United Gear & Assembly. Fairly recently we mentioned captive heat treater United Gear because of their safety record and also the fact that the company is very typical of many manufacturers around the world-while the general economy might be poor many manufacturers can't keep up with business. Read on for all the details from the "Hudson Star-Observer. "Last week United Gear and Assembly, located in Hudson, Wisconsin celebrated three years without a lost time accident. If you are not in manufacturing, this might be meaningless, but in the manufacturing world this is big news. Not only is it significant to the company but to the employees as well. Various trade publications and websites have been noting this landmark accomplishment of the Hudson company. “It has been a wild three years,” said Brian Japuntich, Metallurgy and Safety Department. Not only did the company launch a concerted effort to beef up safety, it also saw the orders and employee numbers plummet with the 2008 recession. In 2008, they had 65 employees. Today there are 275 employees on three shifts, weekdays and two shifts on the weekends. “We are continuing to add more each week,” said United Gear and Assembly president Kevin Frane. “We have enough orders that we could be in the 300 to 311 range soon. The company is presently exploring new opportunities to look for employees. We need people who want to work and have the skill set required.” That has included everything from mechanical engineers to janitors and people with tooling experience. “It was very important to us,” said Frane of the safety award. “It was not uncommon to see accidents monthly. We made a concerted effort to change that. In any industry that is important especially in manufacturing. We have been doing more and more regarding safety.” United Gear and Assembly is located in a 100,000-square-foot facility in the original Hudson Industrial Park on the corner of Livingstone and Industrial roads. The company recently rented an additional 45,000 square feet across the street. “In this type of manufacturing the recession seems to be over,” said Japuntich. “Much of what we make goes into off road equipment.” Agriculture, mining, road building equipment are examples. United Gear and Assembly, produces parallel axis gears, bevel gears, helical gears, worm gears, hypoid gears, gear shafts, half shafts, splined shafts, splines, pinions and sprockets. They also offer horizontal lathing, vertical lathing, horizontal milling, vertical milling, hobbing, shaping, hard turning, broaching, gear tooth grinding, nitride heat treating, carburize heat treating and induction hardening. “What is interesting about our plant is that we start with raw materials and because of our in-house heat treatment, we end up with a finished product for assembly,” said Japuntich. “It saves the customer a lot of time.” January 31/2012 
 Rotary Retort Furnaces. While rotary retort furnaces have largely fallen out of fashion at one point in time they were quite popular and they still can be found in certain applications such as timing chain, chains for chainsaws and small fasteners. While the reasons for their demise are numerous one of the most common complaints was the difficulty in controlling the atmosphere which leads us to the question below. John Young of Steel Processing Company in Warren, Michigan has an AGF rotary retort furnace and would like to hear from individuals who have experience with atmosphere problems in AGF furnaces. “We have an AGF Model 282 and would like to hear from anyone who has experience running one. We are having some atmosphere problems and would like to discuss this with anyone with knowledge of this furnace. Thanks, John Young 586-772-3310 Office 248-909-0038 Cell”January 31/2012 Bosio Group, Slovenia/New Pit Furnace. Personally I have never heard of new furnace builder Bosio Group http://www.bosio.si/en// in Eastern Europe however a couple of our readers in Europe let us know that the company is close to installing a very large pit furnace at OMZ, a heavy machinery builder in Russia. Apparently the electrically heated furnace will be used for normalizing and hardening of shafts with dimensions up to 11’ in diameter and almost 40 feet long which makes it a mighty big pit furnace with a big price tag-estimated installed cost is $3.5 million USD. January 31/2012 Monday Morning Briefing. According to Metal Treating Institute (MTI) http://www.heattreat.net/ the organization expects “moderate” growth in commercial heat treating in 2012. “The growth rate for MTI billings has slowed over the last year following the rapid rise from the 2009 low. After gaining 19.0% in 2011, billings are expected to grow only 3.6% in 2012 and then improve more rapidly in 2013 with gains of around 5%.” At “The Monty” we are far more optimistic based upon the amount of capacity commercial (and captive) heat treaters are currently adding. A good example of this is captive heat treater and aerospace gear manufacturer Aero Gear in Windsor, CT, USA who is adding a number of positions including heat treating positions in an effort to keep up with demand. Aero supplies amongst other items carburized gears for the aerospace industry. Where are they now? Thomas Elias. We remember Tom Elias as a very pleasant fellow (hope we’re not getting him confused with somebody else) during his days at commercial heat treating giants Bluewater Thermal and Bodycote. We happened to run across his name the other day and it turns out he is now with Heroux Devtek with the title Manager-Sales & Program Management. Heroux Devtek is a supplier of aerospace landing gear and while the company has considered bringing their heat treating in house to the best of our knowledge they still outsource 100% (although not as far as we know to either Bodycote or Bluewater). Last week coatings company and commercial heat treater Oerlikon in Queretaro, Mexico had an auction of all or most of their batch IQ equipment. The auction was not a success due to the relatively small sizes of the equipment. Unfortunately at the end of the day electrically heated batch IQ furnaces with a load capacity of less than 1,000 pounds are in very light demand in most parts of the world. Based in Germany SMS Elotherm is one of the larger suppliers of Induction heating equipment for heat treating and steel mills. The company very recently expanded their presence in North America by acquiring a large Induction tooling company in Michigan. Tomorrow, January 31 Mercury Marine in Stillwater, Oklahoma is auctioning off the remaining equipment in the plant. A quick look through the items up for auction will probably not excite most heat treaters although they do appear to have a reasonable amount of lab equipment and some aluminum melting and holding furnaces. And that is your Monday Morning Briefing for January 30 2012. Solar Manufacturing/Robert Wooler. Interesting press release about commercial heat treater Robert Wooler in PA buying a very impressive new vacuum furnace from Solar Manufacturing. Two things jump out at me about this press release the first being that Robert Wooler has been around since 1923-quite a feat. The second is that Solar mentions the price of the furnace which is highly unusual in a press release. “Robert Wooler Increases Capacity With New Vacuum Furnace From Solar Manufacturing. Souderton, PA. 1/27/12- Robert Wooler, a commercial heat treating company located in Dresher, PA, recently commissioned a new vacuum furnace from Solar Manufacturing. The custom-built vacuum furnace is a Model HFL-5748-2EQ featuring a SolarVac 3000 control system, a state-of-the-art operator interface and precise temperature programmer/control with multi zone auto tune PID. The horizontal front-loading furnace has a 36” wide x 36” high x 48” deep work zone and a load capacity of 3,500 lbs. With a maximum operating temperature of 2,500°F, this Class 2 furnace has a temperature uniformity of +/- 10°F per AMS 2750-D standards. With this furnace addition, Robert Wooler can now offer its customers furnace availability, flexibility, and capacity especially for austenitic, martensitic and precipitation hardening stainless steels. Philip “Biff” Keidel, Jr., president of Robert Wooler explains, “This new vacuum furnace is a terrific compliment to our wide range of furnace types including two bar, six bar, and integral oil quench vacuums. Not only was it delivered by Solar Manufacturing on-time, it exceeded all of our specifications and requirements as well.” The tight tolerance on temperature uniformity is especially important since the majority of Robert Wooler’s clients are in highly-regulated, quality-critical industries such as Aerospace, Defense and Medical. The total installed investment (inclusive of utilities and upgrades) was $600,000. This is the 10th vacuum furnace the company has purchased. According to William R. Jones, CEO of Solar Manufacturing, Wooler’s most recent purchase is, “... a result of technical cooperation and field service support between the two companies.” Robert Wooler’s tradition of excellence dates back even further to its inception in 1923, making it one of the oldest continually operating heat treatment companies in the greater Philadelphia area. The family run company is on its third generation of ownership and continues to earn its reputation for top quality service and equipment. Attached photo caption: Philip “Biff” Keidel, Jr., President of Robert Wooler Co. (L) and William R. Jones (R) CEO Solar Manufacturing, Inc. ABOUT SOLAR MANUFACTURING; Solar Manufacturing Inc. manufactures vacuum heat treating and brazing furnaces and offers replacement hot zones for various vacuum furnace brands. To learn more about the Solar Manufacturing’s diverse product line of vacuum heat treating, brazing, sintering, carburizing, and nitriding furnaces contact Peter Reh, vice president of sales, at 267-384-5040 x509 or pkr@solarmfg.com or visit their newly revised web site www.solarmfg.com.” January 30/2012 
Ipsen Titan Furnaces. What is it now a couple of years since Ipsen introduced their line of "TITAN" vacuum furnaces? Well I have to hand it to the company, according to the report below the product has been well received in the marketplace. January 27/2012 "Ipsen Doubling TITAN® Production Due to high worldwide demand for Ipsen’s TITAN® Vacuum Furnace, Ipsen announces the doubling of production for H4 and H6 sizes effective April 2012.
According to Jake Hamid, COO at Ipsen, “We are increasing the combined production of these two sizes to four per month All Source Heat Treating/St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Commercial heat treater "All Source" in the Southern Ontario city of St. Catharines has just added more vacuum processing capacity in the form of a reasonably large Abar-Ipsen 2 bar vacuum furnace. http://www.all-sourceheattreating.com/ All Source is a perfect example of a successful small business. Started 15 years ago by long time heat treater Wayne Howard the company has come a long way since it's modest roots in a rented industrial unit and now has a very impressive building with constantly growing capacity. January 27/2012 CIEFFE Holding SPA/1C Industries. Rather an interesting news item for our European readers. To cut to the bottom line 1C Industries a Switzerland based company that owns a number of heat treating and coating shops (amongst other holdings) has purchased the largest builder of heat treating furnaces in Italy-CIEFFE. Probably no surprise that a number of key people at 1C are ex Ionbond, Bodycote people. CIEFFE as you can see is a good sized company with 125 employees and sales of roughly $40 million USD which makes them one of the larger furnace builders in the world. While virtually unknown in North America in Europe they are quite well known. We hunted through our file photos and came up with this photo of a CIEFFE batch IQ installation at SHU in Ulm, Germany the largest single location commercial heat treater in the world in our opinion with over 500 employees. January 26/2012  "Zurich, 18 January 2012 - The 1C Industries Zug AG further expands its company portfolio. Today, the company has successfully completed the acquisition of a majority stake in the CIEFFE Holding SPA, a group of companies based in Veneto, Italy, which specializes in heat treatment. The CIEFFE Holding SPA was founded in 1984 and is one of the leading groups of companies in the production of heat-treatment furnaces and applications for the automobile, railway, medical and energy industry. The group employs 125 people and in 2011 reported revenues of CHF 36mn. Arcangelo Pessot will maintain his position as CEO of the CIEFFE Holding SPA. Thus, there will be no changes for clients and staff in connection with the change in ownership. Backed by the economic power of the 1C Industries Zug AG, the group will be further developed in a stable manner and the trust of clients, employees and suppliers will be strengthened. Both parties have agreed on non-disclosure about the acquisition price. 1C Industries Zug AG's surface technology division includes hardening plants as well as high tech thin film coating centers of the latest generation. In Europe, Asia and the USA the company produces high-grade products for niche markets in the automobile, aviation, medical, oil, process and the manufacturing industries. Geographically as well as technologically, the group aims to become a global solutions provider." "Paulo Receives Approval as a Heat Treat Source for Ford. St Louis, MO - January 23, 2012 - The St Louis, MO facility of Paulo Products Company has successfully completed all necessary testing and has received approval as a provisional heat treat source for Ford Motor Company. This approval authorizes Paulo to heat treat per Ford Advanced Manufacturing Technology Development Specification Number AMTD-DC2010 for Die Insert Material and Heat Treat Performance Requirements. In order to become a provisional Ford supplier, Paulo - St Louis was required to successfully pass furnace performance tests as well as material testing. This achievement demonstrates Paulo's capability and commitment to meet the world class requirements of the Ford Specification. Paulo - St Louis joins Paulo - Nashville as two of the select few heat treaters who have the Ford approval. "We are proud of this accomplishment and we look forward to providing our customers with the unique capability resulting from meeting the stringent requirements of the Ford spec" says Bob Innes, St Louis Plant Manager. What Should a Batch IQ Furnace Generate (also known as how much work do you need to bring heat treating in house). An experienced commercial heat treater recently quoted a rough rule of thumb which caught my attention. A Batch IQ line with working dimensions of 30" X 48" X 30" (gross loading of 2,600 pounds at 1700F) should generate for a commercial heat treater $500,000 USD/year in revenue, a furnace with working dimensions of 36" X 48" X 36" (3500 pounds gross loading at 1700F) $750,000 USD/year and a unit with working dimensions of 36" X 72" X 36" (6,000 pounds gross loading at 1700F), $1 million USD/year in revenue. If you assume that a complete 36" X 48" X 36" line is approximately $800,000 USD new what you see is that sales revenue generated is roughly the cost of a new line. This rule of thumb leads into another one we have used for many years. Captives frequently ask how much heat treating do they need to send out to justify bringing it in house? The answer is roughly similar; most companies feel that the amount of heat treating they send out in terms of dollars should be roughly equal to the cost of installing the equipment in house. In other words if a manufacturer is sending out $1 million of work to a commercial the company could afford to spend no more than $1 million on equipment to bring the work in house. We will caution that these are rough rules of thumb, many variables go into the mix such as installation costs, used vs.; new the desirability of having heat treating in house and on and on but at the end of the day these guidelines we have found to be a pretty good rule of thumb. January 25/2012 AFC-Holcroft/New 2 Row Pusher. The press release below is from new furnace builder AFC-Holcroft and describes an impressive order the company just received and he imaginative idea they came up with to improve delivery. January 25/2012 "AFC-Holcroft has received an order from a commercial heat treater for a 2-row Pusher Carburizing Line, and is delivering the equipment on a piece-by-piece basis directly onto the customer’s plant floor in order to improve the delivery schedule on this custom equipment. The equipment consists of prewash, preheat, a 2 row pusher carburizing furnace capable of holding 26 trays, hot oil quench with air-to-oil heat exchanger, spray dunk postwash, a single row temper furnace and tray transfers. In order to meet the customer’s immediate production demands, AFC-Holcroft agreed that as each major components of the project are fabricated, the components are delivered to the jobsite and placed directly into position on the customer’s plant floor. The equipment will be utilized primarily for carburizing of parts, but the furnace line will be capable of carburizing, carbonitriding, neutral hardening and marquenching. AFC-Holcroft is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of heat treating furnaces. The legacy companies that comprise AFC-Holcroft have a combined 225+ years of thermal processing experience. The company manufactures turn-key heat treating systems for applications including commercial heat treating, bearings, automotive, aerospace, mining, military, aluminum heat treatment, gear manufacturing, fastener manufacturing, and alternative energy industries. AFC-Holcroft, headquartered in the United States, has a global reach with direct sales coverage in North America and worldwide, while AFC-Holcroft Europe serves major industrial markets in Germany, France, and other European locations. AFC-Holcroft’s Asian Operations manages partners in China, India, South Korea, and other countries in the region, and the company also extends into markets in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Spain, and Turkey through relationships with partners, many of whom have manufacturing capability. For more information, contact media@afc-holcroft.com" ELINO INDUSTRIAL FURNACE GmbH/Wisconsin Oven. Elino is a German furnace builder and one of the oldest in the country. While best known in Europe the company over the past few years has been increasing their global presence and this includes North America http://www.elino-us.com/ As we pointed out in the news item below from the Therm Process show in Düsseldorf, Germany last July the company has a partnership with Wisconsin Oven in East Troy, WI and this appears to be growing - as a matter of fact Elino's North American offices in Wisconsin are exactly 492 feet from the manufacturing facility of Wisconsin Oven. All of this makes us believe that the ties between the two companies are very, very close. The arrangement certainly makes sense, to sell furnaces in North America a company has to have a manufacturing location on the continent and in our opinion Wisconsin Oven is one of the best oven builders in North America if not the world and would make a great partner for Elino. January 24/2012 "July 26/2011. Therm Process/Elino. Today we visit ELINO INDUSTRIAL FURNACE GmbH a 70 year old furnace builder based in Germany who was one of the many exhibitors at the recent Therm Process show in German. A rather interesting company with a very unique concept. While the company has a wide product offering from bell furnaces, to rotary retorts, pushers and chain furnaces (just a few that they offer) what they are really interested in is custom designed furnaces-the ones where no new furnace builder has a standard product offering. High temperature, one of a kind, oddballs, this is where the company really hits their stride. Being a North American I knew very little about the company however it was interesting to hear that they have a partnership with Wisconsin Oven in the US (one of the largest oven builders in North America) so I would suggest we will hear more of Elino in North America in the future." Monday Morning Briefing. New furnace builder "Surface Combustion" in Maumee, Ohio, USA recently hired two new employees, "Daniel Linger" for the position of Field Service Engineer and "Ron Graham" as Regional Sales Manager. Surface Combustion is one of the oldest company furnace builders in North America dating back to 1915 and is best known for their batch IQ furnaces. "Hightemp Furnaces" in India (new furnaces) has received a couple of new orders recently. The first is for a Controlled Atmosphere Aluminum Brazing furnace for a customer in Mumbai, India-this is in conjunction with their partner "AFC-Holcroft" in Wixom, Michigan. The second order the company received is for 5 sealed quench batch IQ furnaces from a fastener manufacturer in Southern India. Induction heating equipment manufacturer "Ambrell" recently shipped a 250-kW EKOHEAT induction heating system to a fastener manufacturer. Ambrell has several locations around the world including the USA and Europe. "General Aluminum Manufacturing" in Rootstown, Ohio which closed in 2007 is back in business with new heat treating capacity. The plant which makes car suspension components recently invested over $12.4 million USD in a 32,000 square foot addition which amongst other equipment includes 3 new aluminum furnaces. Interestingly enough the company previously sent all their heat treating out to a commercial heat treater. Commercial heat treater and brazing company "ThermoFusion Inc.", in Hayward, CA, USA last year invested in a "Dibalog" energy optimization system as a way of lowering their electrical costs. The owner of ThermoFusion, "Dave Buttner" is pleased with the system and has these comments about how it has performed, "Yes, the Dibalog system has done all Gunther said it would do for savings but I believe the better return has been in the increased awareness of electrical usage by our people. We now have a large monitor in the shop that visually shows our electrical demand and usage allowing us to make better production decisions. We have been able to increase our production and better control cost during Summer Peak Demand time of day rates. So with the EOS system we get an extra vacuum run per day adding 5% to our revenue. During the six months of Winter rates our electric bill saving is actually more because we run full production unaffected by the Summer Rate Demand Penalties. ROI with increased production revenue is now half our expected three years.". Dibalog is based in Heidelberg, Germany and is owned by "Gunther Braus". And that is the latest in the heat treating industry for January 23/2012 Magna Powertrain/Syracuse, NY, USA. At one time we rated automotive components manufacturer Magna Powertrain (New Process Gear) in Syracuse, NY as one of the ten largest captive heat treaters in North America with a total of 15 multi-row pusher furnaces and associated equipment. Things change and it was announced a couple of years back that the plant would be closed with production moving to a new facility in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico. At the time several of the pusher furnaces were rebuilt and moved from Syracuse to Mexico where they are currently in production. An auction to dispose of the remaining equipment in Syracuse will be held Wednesday, February 22, 2012. Included in the auction are the remaining pushers all of them older units dating back to the 1970's. Our guess would be that one or two might sell but more than likely the bulk will end up as scrap. January 23/2012 Shanghai Advanced Materials Technology Co., Ltd. We have all heard about the tremendous growth of heat treating in China and the attendant explosion of new furnace builders in the country (some of which are amongst the largest new furnace builders in the world and their quality rivals any around the world). The story of Shanghai Advanced Materials Technology Co., Ltd. (SAMT) is relatively common. The company was started by Mr. Shen Li (an ex Bodycote employee) in March of 2009 and since then has expanded beyond their original scope of work. Next step North America? January 20/2012 "As you knew I left Bodycote in March of 2009, I started the company "Shanghai Advanced Materials Technology Co., Ltd." (SAMT) to offer consulting services for thermal processing industries. Over last three years, SAMT also built up two business teams in cooperation with new partners: One is a third-party independent laboratory for testing and analysis of metal materials in Pudong of Shanghai. This laboratory had been accredited by ISO17025 and it has better competence than SGS Shanghai metal laboratory. Our laboratory consists of services for Chemical Testing , Physical Testing, Mechanical Testing, NDT, Reverse Engineering, Failure Analysis and so on. Another is the engineering company named "Shanghai Advanced Metallurgical Technology Co., Ltd. " (SAMT) for the manufacturing of vacuum industrial furnaces. We are focusing on vacuum heat treatment including vacuum high pressure gas quenching, vacuum oil quenching, austempering, low pressure carburizing, evacuated gas nitriding, plasma nitriding, brazing and sintering. We will expand our capabilities to vacuum melting & casting upwards and surface engineering downwards step by step. We are constructing European standard high quality furnaces with more competitive prices." Dibalog Energy Optimization company Dibalog in Heidelberg, Germany has moved into new 5400 square foot offices, photos of which are below. Dibalog USA had a banner year in 2011 with almost 10 systems sold to captive and commercial heat treaters in North America. Their systems allow users to lower their electrical costs by lowering their peak demand charges. New address: Ezanvillestraße 59 | 69118 Heidelberg | Germany Phone +49 6221 434110 | Fax +49 6221 434119. January 20/2012 
 The Full Monty. We see our buddy "Jack Titus" of AFC-Holcroft has written an interesting article about "Catalytic Gas Nitriding" in the January 2012 issue of Gear Solutions. Jack always writes nice, concise articles that anybody can understand-we like that. "Ipsen Ivadizer® - A Better Way to Prevent Corrosion. CHERRY VALLEY – Whether your business is fasteners or aerospace components Ipsen’s Ivadizer® is the Ion Vapor Deposition (IVD) vacuum vessel you need. This physical vapor deposition process is used to apply pure aluminum coatings to various substrates, mainly for corrosion protection. The Ivadizer® is a better, greener way to prevent corrosion than the old cadmium processes. Processes using cadmium have excellent corrosion resistance and good wear, but as we have known for sometime now cadmium is toxic and can cause many unneeded problems. In recent news one manufacturing plant reported that more than 200 workers had excessive amounts of cadmium in their blood and were required to seek medical attention with recovery time lasting up to three months. Unlike cadmium, aluminum is environmentally clean, nontoxic and safe for operating personnel to handle and use. Ipsen’s Ivadizer® provides a safe process with all the benefits of the old cadmium process - superior corrosion resistance, excellent coating protection without loss of strength, provides ultimate substrate for paint adhesion and flexible load configurations. The base material is not affected by this process and is a pollution free process. With more than 60 years of thermal processing expertise, Ipsen provides the solutions heat treaters need to be successful: energy and cost efficiency, reliable robust equipment, manufacturing and service locations worldwide, aftermarket support – parts and service, engineered components – retrofits and upgrades, thermal processing and furnace maintenance training. Visit http://www.ipsenusa.com for more information." January 19/2012 
Ameritherm. Induction heating equipment supplier Ameritherm has been "rebranded". January 19/2012 "Scottsville, NY - Ameritherm, a leading induction heating systems provider, announces that it is rebranding to "Ambrell - an Ameritherm company" worldwide. The Ambrell brand was introduced outside of the United States several years ago thanks to considerable international growth, and the updated branding enables Ambrell to exhibit one unified brand across the world. Ameritherm was founded on the philosophy of delivering industry-leading induction heating solutions with superior responsiveness. That philosophy has enabled the company to grow into an organization with over 10,000 system installations in more than 50 countries. That demand has necessitated several expansion projects at its global headquarters in suburban Rochester, NY while sales and laboratory offices have been added around the globe. With a single brand and a unified message displayed across the world, it will help facilitate further growth. Cheltenham Induction Heating rebranded to Ambrell Ltd in 2011 and now with Ameritherm rebranded to Ambrell, all of the Ameritherm companies will be unified with Ambrell branding. So regardless of where a customer operates, they will see the same branding. "This rebranding effort is driven by our rapid international growth," says CEO Richard Rosenbloom. "We will now have one face around the world, so customers who operate internationally will see the same brand at each site and know they're working with the same great systems. However, the Ameritherm name will not be forgotten, as Ambrell is and always will be an Ameritherm company" Heat Treating Market North America. On January 12th/2012 we featured a short article about the size of the North American captive and commercial heat treating market. The gist of the story was that for as long as anybody can remember this has been estimated at $20 Billion USD per year of which 10% is commercial and 90% captive. These numbers are gospel-or are they? Having a natural curiosity we set out to see where this number came from and the answer was rather surprising in that nobody appears to have any idea about where this figure originated from or to have any knowledge of an in depth study about the total size of the market. It has been suggested that commercial heat treaters in North America represent 10% of total heat treating sales (a percentage which is possible) and if this figure is correct knowing the size of the commercial market gives us the size of the total market. So do we have an accurate sales figure for commercial heat treating sales in North America? The only organization that has this information is MTI (Metal Treating Institute), a fine organization which represents most of the commercial heat treaters in North America. However as we mentioned in our original posting not all commercial heat treaters belong to MTI and not all members report their numbers to MTI. This being the case it is impossible to extrapolate from MTI numbers as to the exact size of the commercial market (we will hasten to add though that MTI is far and away the most reliable source for this information in NA). So we can use a very rough guess about the size of the commercial market, assume it is 10% of the total market (which is probably, maybe about right) and arrive at a total or we can do it the other way around and find out what the captive heat treat market is. The only problem with this is we have never heard of an accurate study of the total captive market and whether such a study would include manufacturers, steel mills and foundries or just manufacturers or just manufacturers plus steel mills and on and on.. The feedback we received from our original article (from individuals with far more resources and knowledge than ourselves we will add) indicated that they had never been able to pin down reliable numbers either. So at the end of the day lets just happily go along assuming $2 Billion USD/year for commercials (probably a very high number in our opinion) with a total market of $20 Billion USD/year including captive heat treating and not worry too much about how exact this is. Our feeling is that all these numbers are guesses and not particularly educated guesses. January 18/2012
Odds & Ends. Bluewater Thermal the largest US based commercial heat treater in North America (and second largest after Bodycote) has just achieved AS9100 Rev. C aerospace accreditation at their Athens Alabama facility. “Bluewater’s Athens Alabama site recently obtained their AS9100 Rev. C Aerospace accreditation. The Athens site holds many customer and OEM specific accreditations for heat treating and brazing. Plans for early 2012 include Nadcap certification. For more information contact: Chris Chew, Strategic Market Manager – Aerospace & Defense, Bluewater Thermal Solutions; cchew@bluewaterthermal.com; www.bluewaterthermal.com”. Sachin Ghai who was with B & W Heat Treating in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (now Bluewater Thermal) and captive heat treater Northstar Aerospace in Milton, Ontario, Canada is now with commercial heat treater Metex Heat Treat in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Metex is one of the largest processors of fasteners in North America. Bomco, a Gloucester, Massachusetts manufacturer of sheet metal fabrications for jet engines is planning on investing in a new vacuum furnace. Through a bond issue the company has a number of equipment plans in mind including a new 18,000 square foot facility and additional equipment besides the vacuum furnace. SECOWARWICK S.A./Z.P.H. Jan Tarapata. Seco Warwick in Poland has supplied two "New SOLO Swiss furnace for the metal rolling industry. SOLO Swiss has developed a new horizontal annealing muffle furnace operating under controlled atmosphere for the Lamineries Matthey in Switzerland. This SOLO Swiss industrial furnace is used for heat
Furnace Benefits:
SOLO Swiss – www.soloswiss.com manufactures advanced industrial furnaces for the heat treatment of metals since 1945. SOLO Swiss offers controlled atmosphere furnaces, type batch furnaces, bell-type furnaces, retort furnaces, muffle furnaces, hardening furnaces, continuous furnaces, mesh belt furnaces, continuous furnaces with online quenching, used in variety of heat treatment processes (Carburizing, Hardening, Ecocarb, Tempering, Annealing, Austempering, Nitriding, Brazing, Carbonitriding, Sintering, Nitrocarburising, Oxinitriding, Quenching…). SOLO Swiss furnaces are well suited for the treatment of the small complex metallic parts requiring an enhanced heat treatment and reduced distortion. Parts include: springs, clips, fasteners, coins, needles, hooks, ball bearings, parts for the aeronautics, cutlery, watch-making industry, micro mechanic, as well as, long parts for which the bell furnace is most suitable. In all these fields, SOLO Swiss Group’s customers are amongst the most famous names in these industries for more than 40 years. January 17/2012 Advanced Heat Treat Corp./Waterloo, Iowa, USA. We had the opportunity to spend a few days this past week with Gary Sharp, founder and owner of Advanced Heat Treat Corp. doing some skiing in Colorado. Gary is an interesting fellow, many years ago he saw the benefits of Ion (Plasma) nitriding-he took a chance on a technology not well known in North America and the end result is that after many years of hard work Advanced is the largest commercial Ion Nitriding company in North America and amongst the largest commercial heat treaters on the continent. While it is a bold statement I would say that Gary is the person most responsible for the growth of Ion Nitriding in North America, and make no mistake it is a growing technology as is gas nitriding. Advanced, like most captive and commercial heat treaters around the world is finding business to be excellent and while Gary was rather “coy” about his upcoming multiple equipment additions we should be able to give you some more details in the near future. The company has four locations in North America, two in Waterloo, Iowa, one in Monroe, Michigan and one in Cullman, Alabama. http://www.ahtweb.com/ January 16/2012 
"Thermal-Vac 2011-2012.
Times of Growth & Change. Thermal-Vac Technology, Orange 2012 is a year that will mark significant changes in Thermal-Vac’s management, and corporate structure, with the following changes in management.
These positional changes helped kicked off the implementation of a corporate strategic plan for United Gear and Assembly Safety Record. United Gear in Hudson, WI, USA is a gear manufacturer (no surprise there) and large captive heat treater. The company has a very impressive safety record which deserves mentioning. Before we get into that we will say that the heat treat department currently has 18 people on the shop floor, 1 lab technician and Brian Japuntich who manages the heat treat department and who also coordinates the safety program for the company. Their heat treat department consists of 4 induction scanners, 2 gas Nitriders, 5 batch IQ's, 10 tempering units, a two row carburizing continuous pusher, a rotary hearth and 3 Gleason quench press units. Business is good but what we want to mention is their safety record which is very much worth mentioning. Heat treating and manufacturing can be a risky business but obviously this company is doing a great job! January 13/2012 "United Gear and Assembly, located in Hudson, WI is celebrating 3 full years without a lost time injury or illness. Director of Safety, Brian Japuntich, states: “the success of the safety program is directly attributed to plant wide involvement, effective corrective actions and a management team that has a true concern for its employees.” With 270 employees, and growing steadily, the goals are already set for the coming year. They plan on going beyond another year without a lost time incident, lowering comp claim costs, and to continue reducing the total incident rate plant wide. United Gear and Assembly is a manufacturer of gears and shafts for use in engines, transmissions, “frac” mining equipment, electric vehicles, and power generation. Customers include numerous Fortune 100 companies. Producing assembly line ready components from raw material, they also have an on-site captive heat treating plant that includes carburizing, induction, and gas nitriding." EFD Induction. EFD is the largest Induction heating company in the world and probably second largest in the world to Inductoheat. According to the press release below the company has just sold their commercial induction heat treating plant in Germany. Also mentioned in this press release about a new manufacturing facility they have opened in Romania. Many people regard Eastern Europe as one of the largest growth areas for heat treating in the near future. January 13/2012 "EFD Induction to focus on core business—sells commercial heat treatment operation. EFD Induction, Europe’s largest induction heating company, has announced the sale of its Germany-based commercial heat treatment operation EFD Härterei F. Düsseldorf GmbH. The operation, which has units in Freiburg, Munich and Bielefeld, has been acquired by VTN Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH (VTN Holding Company) and has been renamed VTN Fritz Düsseldorf GmbH. “The divestment is in line with our strategy of focusing on our core business of developing and delivering induction heating equipment and related services,” says EFD Induction CEO Eivin Jørgensen. “The sale lets us put more resources into further securing our position as Europe’s number one induction heating company. We have also significantly boosted our European manufacturing capabilities by opening a new facility in Romania.” The new 3,300m² factory in Romania is located in Vidra, just south of the capital Bucharest. “This new facility,” says Jørgensen, “will help us meet the strong European demand for EFD Induction equipment, particularly for induction hardening machines from the automotive and mechanical industries.” Heat Treating Sales/North America. MTI (Metal Treating Institute) reports monthly on the total sales for all its commercial heat treating members in North America. "The Metal Treating Institute, Jacksonville Beach, Fla., reports that sales for the Metal Treating Industry through November 2011 totalled $897.4 million, a gain of 20.3% from 2010, when sales for January-November equalled $745.9 million. November 2011 sales for the Metal Treating Industry amounted to $80.9 million, an increase of 13.3% over November 2010 sales, which reached $71.5 million." If we extrapolate from this we reach total 2011 sales of roughly $978 million USD. While MTI is the largest such organization in the world not every commercial heat treater in North America is a member with the largest of all Bodycote not being included. Earlier this week we estimated Bodycote's North American sales at over $200 million USD. If we add Bodycote's sales to MTI's sales figures and pad it a little bit to reflect the fact that some other commercial heat treaters also don't belong to the organization we arrive at a very approximate figure of a little over $1.3 Billion USD for sales of commercial heat treaters in North America. Taking this one step further conventional wisdom has it that commercial heat treating in North America represents 10% of the captive heat treating market which would mean in house heat treating is worth $13 Billion USD/year in North America. For readers that know the industry well this is quite a different number from the $20 billion USD sales estimate for North America that has been bandied about for as long as I can remember. The 10% estimate I have always found intriguing. It is always taken as gospel however I have never seen or heard an actual study about the size of the captive market. To take this one step further to create such a report one would have to know the value of in house heat treating of literally thousands of manufactures, steel mills and forge shops in North America which would of course include GM, Ford, Caterpillar, P & W, US Steel and on and on. Perhaps somebody has put together such a report but the magnitude of such a project makes my blood run cold to think about. So is the $20 Billion USD estimate for total North American heat treating in one year actually true or is this a number somebody picked out of the air 20 years ago and which has been repeated so many times that it has become a given? Or is it possible that the 10% estimate for commercial heat treating as opposed to captive heat treating is an incorrect number leading to incorrect conclusions? If anybody has knowledge about where this $20 billion USD figure came from originally I would be very interested in hearing it (personally we would like to hear that the total market is $30 billion). January 12/2012 Rohde GmbH /Nitriding Furnace. German furnace builder Rohde is pleased to announce that they recently delivered a new Nitriding/Nitrocarburizing furnace to a repeat customer. January 12/2012 "Rohde GmbH Germany has recently delivered a chamber furnace for nitriding and nitrocarburizing with pre- and post-oxidation for the automotive industry. Working dimensions 35"x35"x71" (900x900x1800 mm). The control and regulation system developed by Rohde saves up to 30 % of the process gases compared to conventional furnaces. A study conducted by a well-known automotive supplier approves the perfect gas distribution with a temperature uniformity in the whole working area of +/- 1K. This is already California Brazing. Commercial brazing company California Brazing has made a major investment in a new machining center. I am impressed and surprised that the company would make such a major investment in a machining center as this is quite unusual for a brazing company but it says a lot about the company's focus on their customers needs. January 11/2012 "California Brazing Places Order for Matsuura Machining Center. (Newark, CA) California Brazing has placed an order with Matsuura for a new 4-axis CNC machining center. This (27) pallet system will also contain an in-process measurement probe as well as a laser for broken tool detection. This $1,500,000.00 investment will increase California Brazing’s machining capacity while further improving their lead times and quality. California Brazing is a “turnkey” manufacturer of critical brazed components for the aerospace, semiconductor, medical, and energy management markets. They are Nadcap, AS9100, and ISO9001:2008 accredited. For more information on California Brazing please contact: Jeff Ager, General Manager, California Brazing, jeffa@californiabrazing.com www.californiabrazing.com." Solar Atmospheres/Vacuum Gas Nitriding. The strides being made in new gas nitriding technology around the world around the world is quite something. Personally if I was a "real heat treater" I would be making sure that nitriding was a part of my product offering as this is a technology growing faster than just about any other around the world. January 11/2012 "Solar New Patent Announcement: Innovative Vacuum Gas Nitriding Furnace Design From Solar Atmospheres Increases Nitriding Cycle Speed By 50% Souderton, PA. 1/6/12- Solar Atmospheres announced today that The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued U.S. Patent No. 8,088,328 covering Solar’s new vacuum gas nitriding furnace design. The patent, including 14 claims, centers on an all graphite hot zone design featuring graphite heating elements, graphite gas baffles, graphite fan, and graphite felt insulation housed in a vacuum chamber enclosure. The advantage of the all graphite hot zone is the combination of non-nitriding components that do not require retort tear down and scrubbing to restore nitriding constants, as with prior 330 alloy retorts. The low mass hot zone provides rapid heating, and combined with an external gas blower and heat exchanger, allows fast heat up and cool down for nitriding cycles that are 50% faster than standard brick or retort designs.
According to Roger A. Jones, corporate president of Solar Atmospheres, “This new furnace has proved equally useful for bright tempering of alloys like H11,13, D2 and bright annealing of brass alloys. This is a significant improvement over standard vacuum furnaces which have slower cycles, or in the case of brass, that can cause contamination.” This new patent can be viewed on the Solar websites: www.solaratm.com or www.solarmfg.com or through The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It is part of an intellectual property portfolio from Solar that includes more than 18 issued patents and numerous patent applications to which Solar has exclusive rights. Odds & Ends. Rumor has it that ECM (Grenoble, France) is receiving an order for a very large vacuum carburizing system from a repeat customer in the auto parts industry. ECM and ALD (Germany) dominate the large production system vacuum carburizing market. Canadian furnace builder Can Eng in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada like most furnace builders around the world had a tremendous 2011 largely on the basis of their offerings to the aluminum industry. As an example the company sold a number of rotary aluminum heat treatment systems an example of which can be seen on our home page in the rotating photos. Commercial heat treater Diamond Heat Treat in Rockford, Illinois, USA suffered a very small fire recently. While the fire department was called damage was insignificant. Oerlikon Balzers in Queretaro, Mexico will be auctioning off some of their heat treating equipment. Oerlikon is a top notch worldwide company that is a leader when it comes to coating technology. IFHTSE (International Federation of Heat Treating and Surface Engineering) has a number of conferences scheduled for 2012 the first of which is the "European Conference on Heat Treatment and Surface engineering 'Combined treatments to improve surface properties'", 22-23 March in Strasbourg, France. The second event will be the "1st International Conference on Energy and the Future of Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering" to be held 25-27 June in Bangkok, Thailand. IFHTSE is an amazing organization in terms of their knowledge. And that is our Odds & Ends for Tuesday. January 10/2012 "RAD-CON JUST GOT GREENER: ADDING CO-GENERATION EQUIPMENT FROM ENERGY RESOURCE CONTROL (Cleveland, OH USA) – RAD-CON, a leading supplier of 100% hydrogen, bell-type batch annealing furnaces (BAF), has announced an addition to the RAD-CON Group: Energy Resource Control Corporation (ERC), a provider of equipment that generates protective atmospheres for a variety of industrial processes. ERC (www.protectiveatmospheres.com), a privately held company, is also based in Cleveland. “The addition of ERC makes available a complementary product that can reduce energy costs at our existing customers, as well as other annealing facilities. RAD-CON’s atmosphere control expertise in the annealing process allows application of this technology in a wider range of facilities. RAD-CON’s global operation will be offering this equipment worldwide, including areas outside the annealing market." stated Mr. Christopher Messina, RAD-CON President. ERC’s primary product is a co-generator that produces high purity nitrogen and steam, typically used in metal processing facilities that clean product using steam-heated pickle lines, and heat treat product in furnaces using a protective atmosphere. Messina explained, “ERC and RAD-CON serve the same niche market: ferrous and non-ferrous annealing and other heat treating. A project to install an ERC co-generator typically delivers a one-year payback on energy alone, not to mention potential quality benefits.” Current ERC President and company founder, Mr. Bud Weiland will remain to assist with marketing and sales, providing a life-long expertise in protective atmospheres. ERC offices will be located at the RAD-CON headquarters in Cleveland. About RAD-CON RAD-CON, Inc. supplies capital equipment and software, along with related services, to manufacturers in need of a high-quality batch annealing process that is part of their manufacturing of cold-reduced strip and wire metal coils. RAD-CON specializes in bell-type batch annealing furnaces (BAF) that use a protective atmosphere of 100% hydrogen. RAD-CON also increases efficiencies of existing annealing facilities through software models. RAD-CON is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. www.RAD-CON.com." January 10/2012 Largest North American Commercial Heat Treaters. Before we get into our list of the largest North American commercial heat treaters we need to clarify our criteria for this list as well as posting a very clear disclaimer. Our criteria for this list was sales for 2011 but even this is not as clear cut as one might think. For instance should sales for services outside of heat treating be considered? All commercial heat treaters offer services outside of "standard heat treating" such as coatings, shot peening, packaging-should these services be included in total sales? At the end of the day we decided that these associated processes should be included. Disclaimer time; The most important point to keep in mind with this list is that as the vast bulk of these companies are privately held no reliable sales figures are available which means that to come up with a 100% correct list is virtually impossible. For this reason we do not claim for a second that this list is 100% accurate but we do say that all of the companies mentioned deserve to be on our list of the largest in North America-the only question mark is the order. Sales figures for the publicly traded companies are relatively easy to come by, for the privately held companies we relied on what the owners told us and personal observation (having visited all of the companies on the list). Over half of these firms freely gave us their sales figures based on this information not being shared (which we of course respect) , a minority declined to share sales figures which is their prerogative and we respect this. We will undoubtedly receive flack for the fact that our list does not agree with MTI (the largest organization in the world of commercial heat treaters). MTI does a fine job of telling their members of their relative status in terms of sales but MTI is handicapped by the fact that not all commercial heat treaters belong to the organization. As an example the largest commercial heat treater in North America, Bodycote is not a member of the organization. Our final point is that while we set out to find the ten largest, we were having so much fun that our list grew to the largest 18 as you can see. We welcome your feedback, comments and corrections. January 9/2012 1) Bodycote International. http://www.bodycote.com/ With roughly 45 locations in North America not counting their "hipping" plants and estimated North American sales of over $200 million USD there is not a shadow of a doubt but that worldwide commercial heat treater Bodycote is the largest in North America. Publicly traded the company has been making very respectable profits of late. Over the years I have seen at least 30 Bodycote plants around the world and a number I have seen would compare very favorably to any in the world in terms of technology and cleanliness. 2) Bluewater Thermal Solutions. http://www.bluewaterthermal.com/ Just as Bodycote is clearly the largest in North America Bluewater Thermal Solutions with 17 locations in the US and Canada is the second largest in North America and the largest US based commercial heat treater in North America. This is a company which is being very aggressive these days and I would expect to see quite a bit of future growth from Bluewater. 3) Paulo Products. http://www.paulo.com/ Our first two choices are pretty clear cut and we feel pretty confident that family owned Paulo Products with 5 plants in Cleveland, OH., Kansas City, MO., Murfreeboro, TN., Nashville, TN., St. Louis, MO. Paulo is a good solid company with a firm hand on the wheel in the form of Ben Rassieur, President and CEO. Conservatively run in our opinion but very well run. 4) AL-Fe Heat Treating. http://www.al-fe.com/index.html Privately held AL-FE Heat Treating is generally considered to be the largest aluminum processor in North America with 6 locations in Charlotte, NC., Wadsworth, OH, Wabash, IN., Columbia City, IN., Defiance, OH. and Saginaw, MI. Like many of the companies on this list Al-Fe generally sticks with what they are good at (aluminum) and man do they do a good job at it. 5) Metal Improvement Company. http://www.metalimprovement.com/ As part of Curtiss Wright Corporation Metal Improvement Company is one of the few publicly traded companies on our list. With 9 plants in Fort Wayne, IN., Wichita, KS,, Lafayette, LA., Roselle, NJ., Columbus, OH, Salem, OH. and Emigsville, PA. MIC is certainly one of the largest in North America and pretty well covers all processes. 6) Atmosphere Annealing. http://www.gerdau.com/specialsteel/ Atmosphere Annealing as part of Gerdau Special Steel North America pumps through mammoth amounts of annealing work. From their website we get this summary; "Gerdau Special Steel North Americas an engineered bar producer headquartered in Jackson, Michigan with worldclass steel manufacturing mills in Jackson, Michigan, Monroe Michigan, and Fort Smith, Arkansas, and metal processing facilities in Huntington, Indiana, Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, Lansing, Michigan, Canton, Ohio, and North Vernon, Indiana." From our standpoint we are most interested in the heat treating locations of which there are four, Canton, OH., Lansing, MI., (2), and North Vernon, IN. 7) Woodworth Heat Treating. http://www.woodworthheattreat.com/index1.aspx Our pick of the seventh largest commercial heat treat in North America is undoubtedly going to earn us some flack, however we are fairly comfortable naming Woodworth as the seventh largest with 5 locations in Flint, MI., Detroit, MI., Ashland, VA., Plymouth, MI. and Southfield, MI with a further location in Mexico coming on line in 2013. Based in Michigan Woodworth concentrates on very large volume work (mainly automotive) and with the large volume work their prices are very attractive based on the volumes they process. 8) Solar Atmospheres. http://www.solaratm.com/ 3 locations, Souderton, PA., Hermitage, PA., Fontana, CA. Bill Jones, CEO of Solar is as usual very forthcoming about sales for the company; "Combined sales, year 2011, for Solar Atmosphere Inc. plant A Souderton, Pa., plant B Hatfield, Pa., Hermitage, Pa. plant, and Fontana, California plant will exceed $32.5 million. Sales increase over year 2010 is up 30%. Growth can be attributed to an up tick in the economy, sales improvement in vacuum brazing for electronic instruments, heat treatment of titanium for aircraft, graphite aircraft brakes, power generation turbine blades, medical implants, dental and medical instruments, aerospace components, vacuum carburizing of helicopter power gearing and drives, vacuum nitriding, various tooling, annealing of SS stampings, annealing of brass, SS, aluminum tubing, and heat treatment of SS castings.An asset too was the start up of our California plant in year 2011 adding to sales this year. We project our California plant to grow !00% in 2012 and sales growth for our other plants to grow 12.5%. Solar Atmospheres Inc. is a privately owned family business with second and third generation management, including an experienced management team of metallurgists, engineers, and operating personnel." Solar is very impressive, a commercial heat treater which has the latest and greatest technology, largely because of their investments in new technology through their equipment division Solar Manufacturing. Their plants are amongst the most impressive commercial facilities in the world. 9) FPM. http://www.fpmht.com/ 3 locations, Elk Grove, IL., Milwaukee, WI., Cherry Valley, IL. I would consider FPM to be the "King" of fastener heat treating. Off the top of my head no other commercial heat treater processes as many fasteners as FPM. 10) ALD Thermal Treatment. http://www.aldtt.net/index.htm Port Huron, MI. For a single location heat treat to make our list is quite a feat but ALD has done it. This is a very specialized company, vacuum carburizing of transmission gears for GM but under the very competent guidance of Robert Peters the company is thriving. 11) Advanced Heat Treat Corp. http://www.ahtweb.com/ 4 locations, 2 in Waterloo, Iowa, Monroe, Michigan and Cullman, AL. Number 12 position is Nitrex due to the fact that they very successfully brought gas nitriding to the market, in the case of Advanced founder and owner Gary Sharp did the same thing with Ion Nitriding. Gary more than any other individual in North America is responsible for the growth of Ion (Plasma) Nitriding. An aggressive company that will continue to grow at a rapid rate. 12) Specialty Steel Treating. http://www.specialtysteeltreating.com/ 3 locations in Fraser, MI., Farmington Hills, MI., East Granby, CT. Privately held Specialty has seen phenomenal growth over the past couple of years, probably more than any other commercial heat treater on our list. Largely automotive and bearings the company has been adding equipment and facilities at an amazing rate over the past couple of years. 13) Nitrex Inc. (A subsidiary of Nitrex Metal Inc.). http://www.nitrex.com/ 5 locations in the US, San Jose, CA., Aurora, IL., North Las Vegas, NV., Mason, MI., Franklin, IN., (in addition the parent company Nitrex Metal Inc. has a facility near Montreal, QC). If FPM is the "King" of fastener heat treating Nitrex would be the "King" of gas nitriding. Founder and owner Michel Korwin has done an amazing job of bringing this technology to the market-without Michel gas nitriding would be no where near as popular. 14) Specialty Heat Treat Inc. http://www.specialtyheattreat.com/ Houston, TX. Texans live and die by the oil and gas industry and it is no surprise that Specialty concentrates on the oil and gas industry. To most heat treaters Specialty would come as quite a shock due to the fact that what they process requires furnaces far from the norm for most commercials. Again a family owned operation. 15) Lone Star Heat Treating Co., Ltd. http://www.lsht.com/ 2 locations, Houston, TX., Denver, CO (Metal Treating & Research Co.). You could certainly debate about whether Specialty or Lone Star is the largest in Texas but at the end of the day both are very similar and both are top notch operations. Lone Star has been very innovative in what they do and their decision to add "deep hole drilling" to their list of services has been an undoubted success. Owned by the Van Dorfy family this company goes back to the 1940's-a family business in the best sense of the word. 16) Braddock Metallurgical. http://braddockmt.com/ 7 locations, Tampa, FL., Jacksonville, FL., Bridgewater, NJ., Atlanta, GA., Daytona Beach, FL., Boynton Beach, FL., Bayamon, Puerto Rico. In Florida and the southeastern US Braddock are "the big boys on the block" and the company pretty well owns the Florida market.. Super nice people and the Braddock's have done a great job in expanding the company. 17) Therm-Tech of Waukesha. http://thermtech.net/waukesha/home.aspx Waukesha, WI. This is a single shop operation and the Wiberg family are to be complimented on the job they have done over the years. This is a family owned business but the amount of money the company has invested in new equipment and technologies a short period of time is mind boggling. There is nothing shy about this company and their investments in new equipment rivals any of the companies on this list. 18) Rex Heat Treat. http://www.rexht.com/ 3 locations in Lansdale, PA., Bedford, PA., and Anniston, AL. A 75 year old company this has to be one of the longest running in the commercial heat treating field. Another family owned business that should be proud of what they have accomplished. Largest North American Commercial Heat Treaters. We are currently putting together our list of the ten largest North American Commercial heat treaters, one that will definitely be on the list is Paulo Products and below is a brief summary of the company along with 3 photos of their various locations. Before we get into Paulo one company that quite possibly should also be on our list which was not originally mentioned is Rex Heat Treat with 3 locations in Lansdale, PA., Bedford, PA., and Anniston, AL. Having visited Rex I would have to say that there is a good chance that the company will be on our final list. January 6/2012 One of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America and certainly the largest family owned one is St. Louis, Missouri based Paulo Products http://www.paulo.com/. Paulo has 5 locations in the US, Willoughby, Ohio, Murfreesboro, TN., St. Louis, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri and Nashville, TN. As with most of the largest commercial heat treaters the company can offer most processes, vacuum, batch IQ, vacuum and a few others but there are a few things about the company which fascinates us and sets them apart from all the other companies on the list. The first is the amount of in-house engineering that the company does. For instance all the data logging and order entry/tracking systems are designed, built and supported by Paulo internally-unusual to say the least. Second is the fact that the processes are duplicated in a number of plants. For instance if a customer is running parts that require austempering in the Murfreesboro facility they could easily be moved to the St. Louis plant running the same furnaces the same way with the same control systems. Third is the fact that all customer and processing information is available at each facility. As an example a customer could ask the TN plant about the status of his products being run in the OH plant and get a quick answer-although in this case each is running completely different furnaces. The list goes on about some of the innovative ideas the company has but suffice to say Paulo does more engineering work in house than probably any of the other companies we can think of in the top 10. We mentioned that this is a family owned business; the current President is Ben Rassieur and if I remember correctly it was his grandparents that started the company. Another bit of trivia about the company that we can mention is that the Ohio plant, American Brazing is almost entirely vacuum and in terms of the number of furnaces under one roof has to be one of the largest-over 20 at last count. The facilities vary in size but each is larger in terms of sales than the average North American shop and (another bit of trivia for you) Paulo almost exclusively buys new equipment as opposed to used which sets them apart from the majority of commercial heat treaters in North America. 
 
SOLO Swiss/Lamineries Matthey. According to the press release below SOLO Swiss a new furnace builder (which has been around since 1945) has recently received an order from captive heat treater Lamineries Matthey also in Switzerland for a horizontal annealing furnace. Read on. January 6/2012 "New SOLO Swiss furnace for the metal rolling industry. SOLO Swiss has developed a new horizontal annealing muffle furnace operating under controlled atmosphere for the Lamineries Matthey in Switzerland. This SOLO Swiss industrial furnace is used for heat treatment of round bars in Copper Berylium (CuBe.) The system was purchased to replace an old furnace with inconsistent heating, which required very slow temperature rises to avoid overheating in some areas. This new furnace allows Lamineries Matthey to perform precision heat treatment of plates and bars of all types of materials in complex alloys (alloys of copper, brass, bronze, nickel, aluminum and nonferrous metals, nickel, iron, steel, titanium ...)
The useful loading dimensions are about 3200 mm long for 250 mm width and a height of 150 mm. The maximum working temperature is 750 ° C.
Furnace Features:
Furnace Benefits:
SOLO Swiss – www.soloswiss.com manufactures advanced industrial furnaces for the heat treatment of metals since 1945. SOLO Swiss offers controlled atmosphere furnaces, type batch furnaces, bell-type furnaces, retort furnaces, muffle furnaces, hardening furnaces, continuous furnaces, mesh belt furnaces, continuous furnaces with online quenching, used in variety of heat treatment processes (Carburizing, Hardening, Ecocarb, Tempering, Annealing, Austempering, Nitriding, Brazing, Carbonitriding, Sintering, Nitrocarburising, Oxinitriding, Quenching…). SOLO Swiss furnaces are well suited for the treatment of the small complex metallic parts requiring an enhanced heat treatment and reduced distortion. Parts include: springs, clips, fasteners, coins, needles, hooks, ball bearings, parts for the aeronautics, cutlery, watch-making industry, micro mechanic, as well as, long parts for which the bell furnace is most suitable. In all these fields, SOLO Swiss Group’s customers are amongst the most famous names in these industries for more than 40 years. Lamineries MATTHEY SA - www.matthey.ch - since 1901 is recognized as one of the undisputed market leaders for precision cold rolling, capable of meeting very specific and technically demanding requirements. It is a preferred partner for the supply of copper-beryllium rod, tube and wire in all sizes. Lamineries MATTHEY now offers a wide range of nickel alloys. They are now all available in precision rolled thin strip. Every year, we serve more than 400 active customers worldwide in areas as various as connector technlogy, electronics, watches, automotive, telecommunications, sophisticated mechanical, medical and aerospace." Nevada Heat Treating/Carson City, Nevada, USA. Commercial heat treater and brazing company Nevada Heat Treating just this week had a visit from a US Senator who toured the facility (Editors note; Senator Dean Heller is a Republican, I doubt a Democrat would have made it into the plant and rightfully so but this is pure speculation on our part and has nothing to do with Nevada Heat Treating). January 6/2012. "A purple-blue flame shot in a steady stream out of a furnace at a plant just outside of Carson City, a reminder of the high-heat metal treatment it specializes in. A few feet away, U.S. Sen. Dean Heller leaned toward Nevada Heat Treating's general manager, Harv Hornung, to hear his explanation of the business over the hum of production. Nevada Heat Treating specializes in heat-treating, brazing and manufacturing metal products for customers that range from manufacturers of U.S. military weapons to hobbyists needing car parts strengthened. Heller, a Republican, was swinging through the area to see the diversity of Nevada manufacturing, a tour coordinated with Northern Nevada Development Authority Executive Director Rob Hooper and the NNDA's corporate solutions manager, Maurice Washington. Washington is a former state senator. "I just think it is incredibly important for America to continue to lead in manufacturing," Heller said after the tour. "And I think if you look at the manufacturers in Northern Nevada, in Carson City, Douglas County and across the state, manufacturing is alive and well." He cited the local manufacturers as proof that the United States can still push the economy forward - not that he doesn't support government reforms that he says will help manufacturers further. "We discuss (how to help manufacturers) every day back in Washington, D.C.," Heller said. "I think it has a lot to do with the tax structure; it has a lot to do with the size of the government," adding that the U.S. has among the world's highest corporate tax rates and that over-regulation will hurt manufacturing growth. During a brief question-and-answer session with some of the plant's workers, Hornung took the opportunity to jab at Heller and a mucked-up Congress. "I think the economy is about to break loose," Hornung said. Heller said he agreed. "And no offense, but you guys need to kind of get your act together, also," Hornung finished, eliciting another agreement from Heller. The senator bashed a lack of proper budgeting and reliance on continuing resolutions that provide only temporary funding. But he also bashed both sides of the aisle for failing to compromise. "If you get about 80 percent of what you want - and both parties are getting about 80 percent of what they want - then you've won," Heller told the workers. "The problem is, we spend about 90 percent of the time worrying about the other 20 percent!" After Heller left, Hornung said he was honored that his company was picked for a tour by the senator, and also that he appreciated his answers. "I think he understands that we work very hard and that we expect them to work very hard for us also," he said." Thermo-Fusion/Hayward, CA. We have this report from commercial heat treater Thermo-Fusion in California about what they accomplished in 2011. January 5/2012 - reduced lead time in all areas for faster customer service I think this points out a few things: 1) existing, small, old school businesses like heat treating and brazing are hiring (although good people are hard to find!). Woodworth Heat Treating. As we finalize our list of the largest commercial heat treaters in North America lets have a look (in no particular order) at several of the companies that might end up in our Top 10 list. First up is Woodworth Heat Treat a Michigan based commercial heat treater with five plants in Flint, MI., Detroit, MI., Ashland, VA., Plymouth, MI., and Southfield, MI. Woodworth is a family owned third generation commercial heat treater run by Mr. Terry Woodworth. No surprise being based in Michigan that the company specializes in the high volume automotive industry although it does also offer vacuum processing capabilities. While most things about the company are impressive what has always fascinated the writer is the monster tip up furnaces for nitriding-certainly the largest gas nitriding furnaces we have ever seen. What is news is the fact that the company is opening a very large operation in Mexico which will be up and running January of 2013. Down the road we will be able to offer more details. In the one interior photo below you see the Plymouth facility, the second shows the almost brand new Flint, Michigan location. January 4/2012 .jpg) .jpg) AMEC Meeting January 2012. Aerospace Metals Engineering Committee 2012 Meeting at Asilomar Conference Grounds. The first meeting of AMEC in 2012 will be at the California State Asilomar Conference Grounds on the Pacific Coast in Pacific Grove, California. This is located about 90 minutes from the San Jose airport and about 30 minutes more from the San Francisco airport. There is a small local airport in Monterey about 15 minutes from Asilomar. We have been having our first of the year meeting at Asilomar for well over 20 years and it is usually our most well attended. The meetings start at 3:00 PM on Wednesday, January 19. They continue all day Thursday, January 19 and end at Noon Friday, January 20. For more information Tom Croucher, tom@croucher.us January 4/2012 Largest North American Commercial Heat Treaters. So who are the largest commercial heat treaters in North America? Our criteria for this list is the ten largest in terms of sales in North America during 2011 (at least two potential companies on our list, Bodycote and Vac Aero have operations outside of North America but sales outside of North America will not be considered for our rankings of North American heat treaters). An important consideration when reviewing this list is that with the exception of Bodycote, Metal Improvement and Atmosphere Annealing all are privately held corporations and reliable sales figures are hard to come by however we are very confident in our ability to come close to an accurate ranking of each company. The list below is what we would consider the largest that we know of and includes a total of 19 companies, over the course of the next week we will refine this list and come up with the 10 largest next Monday. As a point of reference the average heat treat in North America has sales of between $3 and $4 million USD annually and generates between $125,000 and $150,000 in sales per employee/year. This productivity figure is a rough number and will vary wildly depending upon the processes offered by each company, geographic location and industries served. For instance a commercial heat treat with old salt pots will see this number quite a bit lower, a top end heat treat with brand new, state of the art equipment will see an average number quite a bit higher. The list below is in alphabetic order and gives you an idea about our starting point. Lots more to come. January 3/2012 Advanced Heat Treat Corp. http://www.ahtweb.com/ 4 locations, 2 in Waterloo, Iowa, Monroe, Michigan and Cullman, AL. ALD Thermal Treatment. http://www.aldtt.net/index.htm Port Huron, MI. AL-Fe Heat Treating. http://www.al-fe.com/index.html 6 locations, Charlotte, NC., Wadsworth, OH, Wabash, IN., Columbia City, IN., Defiance, OH., Saginaw, MI. Atmosphere Annealing. http://www.gerdau.com/specialsteel/ 4 locations, Canton, OH., Lansing, MI., (2), North Vernon, IN. Bodycote International. http://www.bodycote.com/ Roughly 45 locations in North America not counting their "hipping" plants. Bluewater Thermal Solutions. http://www.bluewaterthermal.com/ 17 locations in the US and Canada. Braddock Metallurgical. http://braddockmt.com/ 7 locations, Tampa, FL., Jacksonville, FL., Bridgewater, NJ., Atlanta, GA., Daytona Beach, FL., Boynton Beach, FL., Bayamon, Puerto Rico. FPM. http://www.fpmht.com/ 3 locations, Elk Grove, IL., Milwaukee, WI., Cherry Valley, IL. Hudapack Metal Treating. http://www.hudapack.com/ 3 locations, Elkhorn, WI., Glendale Heights, IL., Franklin, WI. Lone Star Heat Treating Co., Ltd. http://www.lsht.com/ 2 locations, Houston, TX., Denver, CO (Metal Treating & Research Co.). Metal Improvement Company. http://www.metalimprovement.com/ 9 plants in Fort Wayne, IN., Wichita, KS,, Lafayette, LA., Roselle, NJ., Columbus, OH, Salem, OH., Emigsville, PA. Nitrex Inc. (A subsidiary of Nitrex Metal Inc.). http://www.nitrex.com/ 5 locations in the US, San Jose, CA., Aurora, IL., North Las Vegas, NV., Mason, MI., Franklin, IN., (in addition the parent company Nitrex Metal Inc. has a facility near Montreal, QC). Paulo Products. http://www.paulo.com/ 5 plants, Cleveland, OH., Kansas City, MO., Murfreeboro, TN., Nashville, TN., St. Louis, MO. Solar Atmospheres. http://www.solaratm.com/ 3 locations, Souderton, PA., Hermitage, PA., Fontana, CA. Specialty Heat Treat Inc. http://www.specialtyheattreat.com/ Houston, TX. Specialty Steel Treating. http://www.specialtysteeltreating.com/ 3 locations in Fraser, MI., Farmington Hills, MI., East Granby, CT. Therm-Tech of Waukesha. http://thermtech.net/waukesha/home.aspx Waukesha, WI. Vac Aero. http://www.vacaero.com/ 3 locations in North America, Montreal, QC (2), Oakville, ON. Woodworth Heat Treating. http://www.woodworthheattreat.com/index1.aspx 5 locations Flint, MI., Detroit, MI., Ashland, VA., Plymouth, MI., Southfield, MI. |
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"DEARBORN HEIGHTS, MI – January 31st, 2012 – After 40 years of using the letters CS on an image of an open book, Controls Service, Inc. is retiring their "book" logo. The new "block" logo epitomizes the three main elements of their success: their scientific approach, their technical ability and embracing of new technologies, and the importance of the human element. Controls Service, Inc. created the new logo as part of a new marketing plan to develop upon the strong, well-respected image they have built over their first 40 years in business. "Forty years in business is no small feat. Not many businesses reach this milestone," says Darrell Rydzewski, President and CEO of Controls Service, Inc., "We feel the updated logo better represents who we are as a company and the direction in which we are headed." "The development of the new logo is not meant as a new beginning but rather to build upon our reputation as the premier support service provider and to develop a recognizable brand better representing our dedication to our customers and craft," says Justin Rydzewski, Marketing Coordinator and Sales Representative, "The new logo reflects our ambitions and focus and will come to represent total confidence; a symbol of supreme quality." The slogan of "Second to None" will always remain. According to Darrell Rydzewski, "Second to None" has a much deeper meaning, "For us, it is far more than just a slogan. It is our way of doing business and we prove it in everything we do." Along with a new logo, Controls Service, Inc. is unveiling a new, updated website with additional features and content, new marketing materials, and new business documents. As Controls Service, Inc. moves forward, they will continue to be guided by a Second to None attitude, an established business approach, and an extensive knowledge base and proven service offering. And, now, a new symbol will represent all of their collective effort. About Controls Service, Inc. Established in 1972, Controls Service, Inc. is the premier field service organization providing maintenance, calibration, repair and testing services for process control systems servicing primarily the aerospace, automotive, and heat treat industries. Contact Information, Justin Rydzewski, Marketing Coordinator 
starting in April. Along with the other TITAN models, we are planning to ship 60-80 TITANs in 2012.” Hamid continues, “TITAN demands steadily increased last year peaking at a record of seven units shipped in the final 15 business days of 2011.”Combining world-class features and the ability to change voltages, frequencies, languages and units of measure at the touch of a button has made the TITAN a truly global product. Recent buyers are located in the USA, Mexico, China, Japan and India. For more information visit 
Where Are They Now/Matt Barlett. Remember Matt Barlett formerly International Application Engineer for Marathon Monitors and a real character? He did not die or retire but has moved on and is doing well in another Industry as a Global Sales Engineer for Micropoise. Micropoise manufactures automated tire testing equipment for Goodyear, Michelin and others. Photo: Recent sighting of Matt in Thailand calling on customers January 18/2012
vacuum furnaces, that greatly extend the range of technological possibilities to Z.P.H. Jan Tarapata in Kolbuszowa. Poland. The scope of delivery includes vacuum furnace VPT type with high pressure cooling system and high vacuum system, isothermal quenching, vacuum carburizing FineCarb® and pre-nitriding PreNitLPC®. The furnace equipment enables hardening, tempering, annealing, age hardening, brazing and vacuum carburizing. January 17/2012
treatment of round bars in Copper Berylium (CuBe.) The system was purchased to replace an old furnace with inconsistent heating, which required very slow temperature rises to avoid overheating in some areas. This new furnace allows Lamineries Matthey to perform precision heat treatment of plates and bars of all types of materials in complex alloys (alloys of copper, brass, bronze, nickel, aluminum and nonferrous metals, nickel, iron, steel, titanium ...).The useful loading dimensions are about 3200 mm long for 250 mm width and a height of 150 mm. The maximum working temperature is 750 ° C.
California, has closed 2011 as our second consecutive year of revenue growth, and record profitability. The increase in revenues were driven by both the aerospace, and energy sectors. Current sales forecasts indicate steady growth through 2014.
growth thru the end of 2014. Some of the exciting changes in sales, and marketing include the launch of the new Thermal-Vac brand, our new website that will go on line in January 2012, new Shop Tech E2 ERP software that will provide a seamless administrative process, connecting all disciplines of business administration from start to finish. Starting in early 2012 our New On Demand reservation system will allow customers pre schedule services as if our equipment was theirs. Please visit our website @ 
the third furnace our customer has bought in a short period of time with an option to buy one more soon. This furnace is equipped with a gas fast-cooling-device to reduce the treatment hours to work even more efficiently than before. The customer satisfaction mainly results from our process technology which is constantly developed further together with well-known institutes like the IWT / Bremen. Besides gas carburizing, nitriding is one of the largest business areas for Rohde GmbH. Since 2011 we do have besides our representation in North America , Westerwork that represents us in India. We are looking forward to a successful year and would like to wish our customers, suppliers and partners all the best for 2012!" January 12/2012
