Over the years “The Monty” team has visited literally hundreds of captive and commercial heat treats around the globe, a number stick out as being truly memorable. As part of a regular series we will mention some of the more memorable ones and we start off with a commercial heat treater in Italy by the name of Gruppo T.T.N. which we visited a little over a year ago. While a number of things were very unique about the company the main one was the depth of the gas nitriders and the size of the pit to hold them-the only pit which we can think of that even comes close is in the Bodycote, Melrose Park, Illinois facility. Below we have a brief summary of the company and two photos of the pit nitriders.

“Gruppo T.T.N./Italy. Last week we had the chance to visit commercial heat treater Gruppo T.T.N., at their headquarters in Nerviano, Italy which proved to be a rather interesting experience. The family owned group consists of 9 locations, all in northern Italy with a total of 500 employees-now 9 plants and 500 employees would rank the company as one of the largest commercial heat treaters in Europe and even the world for that matter.  As far as we can tell there are no processes the company does not have-Induction, Vacuum, Salt, Gas & Plasma Nitriding, annealing, Quench & Temper, Vacuum Carburizing-there is literally not a process we can think of that the company does not have. The only common denominator would appear to be that the company focuses mainly on large parts, however since they also have belt furnaces even this statement is not entirely true.

In the lobby there is a rather interesting photo and certificate dating back about 15 years. The certificate of achievement is from Boeing and emphasizes the company’s contributions to the Nasa Space missions when they heat treated components for fuel tanks for rockets, a contribution which required a Boeing team to be on site for 6 months. Mr. Pirovano who founded the company back in 1978 and who is still very active turned out to be a very friendly and open fellow who allowed us to take photos of the entire plant-some of the results of which you can see below and are far more interesting than our scribblings.”

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