HEAT TREAT RADIO

Heat Treat Radio #115: Lunch & Learn: Decarbonization Part 2

/ HARDENING TECHNICAL CONTENT, HEAT TREAT RADIO

In this episode of Heat Treat Radio, Doug Glenn and guest Michael Mouilleseaux, general manager at Erie Steel LTD, continue their discussion of case hardness, delving into the hardening ability of materials, focusing on case hardening and effective case depth. Michael explains the differences between total and effective case depth, the impact of core hardness, and the role of material chemistry. They also discuss practical applications for heat treaters, emphasizing the importance of understanding material properties.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

The Influence of Core Hardness on Effective Case Depth Measurement (01:03)

Doug Glenn: Today we are going to talk about a pretty interesting topic, and some interesting terminology, that has to do with hardness and hardenability of metals. For people who are not metallurgists, this may seem like a strange topic because isn’t all metal hard?

But we are going to talk more in depth about hardness of metal, hardenability of metal, and effective case depth. What we want to do is get a run down on the influence of core hardness on effective case depth measurements.

Michael Mouilleseaux: We are going to get a little bit into the weeds today on some things specific to metallurgy.

Those who are involved in high volume production carburizing know that consistency of results is extremely important. It is not just important in that we have the process centered in that the results are that way, but ultimately it has something to do with the dimensional control.

Specifically with gears, if the output from the process is not consistent, then one of the things that is going to suffer is going to be the dimensions. So, we’re going to be talking about effective case depths today.

Effective Case Depth vs. Total Case Depth (02:23)

Effective case depth is a little bit different from total case depth. Total case depth is the total depth that carbon is diffused into a part. That is very much a function of time and temperature. And there are some nuances with grain size and alloy content, but it is essentially a time and temperature phenomena.

Effective case depth vs total case depth (02:59)

Effective case depth is a little bit different. If we look at this graph, the x axis is the distance to the surface, and the y axis is hardness in Rockwell C.

If you look at the green line, this is a micro hardness traverse of a carburized part. It tells us many things. If you look at the left-hand side of the line at .005 in depth, the hardness there is 60 Rockwell C. Then it diminishes as we go further into the part: 0.010, 0.020, 0.040, 0.050.

We get to the end of that line, and we see that is the core strength. The core is a function of the material hardenability.

So, what is the effective case depth? If we look at the second vertical blue line on the right, it says “Total Visual Case.” So that’s exactly what that is. If we were to look at this part and etch it — I am presupposing that everybody understands that we would section the part — we would mount it, we would polish it, and then we would look at it in the microscope at 100x. Then, we would see a darkened area, which would be the total depth of carbon diffusion into the part. That is not a function of the material grade; there are some nuances there.

But the effective case depth is a measurement. And in North America’s SAE Standard J423, we say that we measure the case effective depth to Rockwell C 50. The surface hardness is 60, we measure the hardness in increments, and when we reach this hardness the depth that hardness achieves is 50 Rockwell. That is the effective case depth. If we look at the core hardness on that part, we can see that on this particular sample it is somewhere between 45 and 50.

Finding Material Hardenability (05:17)

Hardenability band graph (14:26)

What causes this core hardness? It has to do with the hardenability of the material.

Here we are looking at an SAE chart J1268. It is for H band material for 4320, a common gear material. This tells us a lot. It has the chemistry on it, below that it has some information for approximate diameters, and then it has, on the far right side of the diameters, we see specs for cooling in water or cooling in oil.

And between them there is the surface, the three-quarter radius, and the center. If we look at the surface of an oil quench at two inches, it has a distance from the surface of something like 4 or 5. So, if you go over the chart on the left-hand side, go to 4/16” or 5/16”, which has an HRC of 29 to 41. Even though this is a hardenability guaranteed material, for a two-inch round you would expect to have something between 29 and 41 for the surface hardness.

Now let’s look at what you would get at three-quarter radius in an oil quench. If you look at two inches, the Jominy position is [eight]. You can see that at three-quarter radius on a two-inch bar, that is an inch and three quarters, I believe, the hardness is going to be something between 23 and 34. In the center of that bar for a two-inch round, it is going to be J12, which has a hardness of 20 to 29.

That is the definition of hardenability. It is the depth that a material can be hardened. And it’s totally a function of chemistry. Davenport and Bain did the algorithms for this in the 1920s leading up to World War II.

Effect of Core Hardness (07:20)

If we are going to evaluate the effect of core hardness, we are going to look at parts that are heat treated in the same furnace to the same cycle in the same basket under all of the same conditions — the only thing different is going to be the hardenability of the material.

Methodology Slide (07:37)

Go all the way down to number three on this “Methodology” slide. The anticipated total case is going to be about 0.040 for all of these samples.

Hardenability samples measured (08:43)

This data graph has four samples on there. The red line is the measurement of Rockwell C 50. If we look at the highest hardenability sample, the blue sample has the highest core hardness and also the deepest effective case depth. And as the core hardness is reduced, you can see that where the line crosses the plane of Rockwell C 50, that is reduced as well.

Doug Glenn: Am I correct in thinking the yellow line here at the bottom has the lowest core hardness or hardenability?

Michael Mouilleseaux: Both. You’re correct.

Doug Glenn: That’s why it is crossing the red line much earlier than the others.

Michael Mouilleseaux: Yellow also has the lowest effective case depth.

Tabular data (10:22)

If we look at this in a tabular form, this is the data, and what you looked at were the microhardness traverses, per the standard using an MT-90: the hardness was (the effective case depth was) measured to Rockwell C, the total case depth was determined visually on these things, and, you’re going to say, that Michael, you’ve got four different materials there. That is correct. We also have four different hardenabilities.

In answer to the question, if these were all the same heat, would we have these same results? We would with the exception of the bottom one at 1018. There is no way that we could take an alloy steel and reduce the hardenability of that amount.

Here is what we are talking about: We know that they were all run at the same process when we look at the total enrichment on this; it’s within the margin of error 0.038 to 0.042.

We look at the effective case depth, interestingly, we have quite a variation there. The first one has the highest core hardness at 46, and the effective case depth is 0.039. Second, we have a sample where the core hardness is 44, and the effective case depth is 0.036. Third, we have a sample where the core hardness is Rockwell C 39, and we have 0.029 effective case depth. And finally, there’s the 1018 sample that was put in there just as a reference. The core hardness on that was 24 with 0.015 effective case depth.

There is a direct proportion between the core hardness and the effective case depth that you are going to be able to achieve.

Referencing back to that hardenability chart that we looked at (the very bottom, half inch section quench in moderately agitated oil), it has a Jominy position of 3. If we look at J3 on the chart, we can see that at the lower end of the chemistry composition, we could have a core hardness as low as 35, and at the upper end of the chemistry composition we could have a core hardness as high as 45.

Tabular data (10:22)

Let’s go back to the tabular data. That column for J3 is the data that was provided to us by our client from the steel mill.

When they melt a sheet of steel, it is a high value part. So, they use what is called SBQ (special bar quality). Special bar quality is subject to a lot of scrutiny and a lot of controls. One of the things provided, in addition to things like the chemistry and the internal cleanliness in the steel certification, is the hardenability of that specific heat.

You can see that the 8620, the first line, had a J3 of 44. We actually had a 46. The way to understand that is that when you’re going to melt 200 tons of steel, 100 tons of steel, or whatever amount it’s going to be, it’s not all done at one time in a single pour. It’s multiple pours out of a tundish.

The chemistry and the hardenability numbers that you got in a steel certification is going to be very close to an arithmetic average of what you would get when they test the first pours and the middle pours and the end pours. They’re going to average out.

Applying the Data (12:44)

When we’re using this data internally, we say we want to be plus or minus two points Rockwell C within the steel certified hardenability data. I can say that experientially over the years, Gerdau, SDI, Nucor (the domestic sources of SBQ bar )are very consistent in the way they make this stuff, and this is something that we can depend upon.

You could use this as a check for what you’re doing. If the steel that you have has a hardenability of 44 and if you’re not plus or minus two, you have to ask yourself why. There are only a couple of reasons that it would be outside those limits. If it’s above you, it probably is not the heat that it’s purported to be. If it is lower, it could either not be the heat that it’s purported to be, or there could be an issue with the heat treating.

As I said at the outset, we’re going to assume in this discussion that the reason that we have these numbers — the differential and core hardness — is not attributable to heat treating; it’s solely attributable to the chemical composition of the material or the hardenability.

We can use this information if we are an in-house or captive operation and are purchasing the material. We have an opportunity to define in our purchasing practice what the hardenability of the material is going to be.

As I mentioned before, the domestic sources are very consistent in the material that they produce. To produce a heat of 4320°F that has a J3 of 40 or 42 or 44, there is no cost penalty to that (in my experience involved in a major automotive supplier). It is a definition of what you want.

They are not making heats by randomly selecting chemistries for these heats and selling them. They make a recipe for a specific client. And my experience has been that they hold very true to that recipe.

If you are introducing a lot of variation into your process, not only is the output from that variable, but the cost of handling that is variable as well. A material such as this, to specify a J3 of 42 to 44, is something that is eminently doable. My experience is that the steel companies have been able to do that over time with a great amount of consistency.

Now, for those who are not involved in high volume production and do not have control of the source of the material, this chart remains usable. If someone is running a job shop or shorter term things who does not have furnace load sizes of parts, the key is to be able to mix and match things into specific processes. At least in carburizing, if we understand what the hardenability of the material is, then we have a much better opportunity of taking multiple parts and putting them into a load and determining ahead of time whether or not we are going to have consistent results.

Just one more thing that we would like to look at here is this next graph — the Caterpillar hardenability calculator. This is available from Caterpillar, and they readily share it with most all of their suppliers. I have been involved in numerous businesses and have never been refused this. You have to ask them for a copy of it.

SAE Chart J1268, which measures hardenability band for 4320 (05:47)

Michael Mouilleseaux: Using this calculator you import the chemistry of a heat, and then it automatically calculates the hardenability of that heat.

If you recall the J3 on the 4320 material that we looked at, the hardenability guaranteed it had a ten-point range. If you look at this particular heat, and this is what we call the open chemistry, this would not be a hardenability guaranteed material. The upper limit is higher than what you would see on a hardenability guaranteed material, and the lower limit is lower than what you would see. So the variation in a “Standard SAE J 48620” is going to be much wider – it will be much different.

If we look at that same J3 position, we are looking at 25 to 45, a 20-point swing in core hardness. If we go back and revisit the results we had, 39 to 46 with a seven-point swing, we had a 0.010 difference in effective case stuff. If we had a 20-point swing, you could imagine it is going to be significantly greater than that.

Two things, if you have the lower hardenability grade of material, it allows you to modify your process ahead of time to compensate for the fact that the core hardness is going to be lower in this part. Vice versa, if you have an extremely hot heat or it is high hardenability, similarly, you may be able to reduce some time and not put as much total case on the part in order to achieve what specified as effective case.

The hardenability charts are great guides in helping to establish a process and then to evaluate the consistency of that process.

One other comment about the chart is this is not a full-blown Lamont chart, which has various quench severities for different sizes. And that can be utilized to help pinpoint this. As you can see on the SAE chart, you essentially have two different quench rates. You have mild oil and water.

There are a lot of different types of quenchants that are available. The moderate quench rate that is on this chart very closely mimics what we at Erie have been able to achieve modified marquenching. Therefore, I’m able to use this chart without any offset.

Now, if you had a fast oil — petroleum-based oil is very fast — and a heat that had a J3 of 40 in which you are consistently seeing 44 out of it, then in your specific instance, your quenchant is more aggressive than what this chart was built to simulate. However, you can continue to use the chart. It’s just that you must use your experience in doing it.

So again: The strategy to control it is getting the hardenability data so that you can utilize that ahead of time — understanding what your specific heat treating operation is and, more specifically, what your quenching operation allows you to achieve.

Then, knowing that a typical section size of X in this furnace is going to give a Jominy position of Y, you can take that information and say over time, “If I have a variation here, it’s going to be an effective case depth. Is that variation attributable to the core hardness?” If it is, there is a strategy which will possibly change and tighten up the purchasing practice. If it is attributable to something else, then that gives good information to say, “There’s something in my heat treating process that I should be looking at that is attributable for this variation in case depth.”

Conclusion (22:14)

So, we waded into the weeds, and hopefully we have found our way out.

Doug Glenn:  I think that explanation is going to be especially good for those who already know a little bit of metallurgy and know those charts.

Bethany Leone: Michael, for in-house heat treaters, how often do they need to be aware of the materials coming into their operations, testing it, or asking about changes that could be happening?

Michael Mouilleseaux: Hopefully this would give heat treaters worth their salt a reason to pause if they previously assumed the material does not come into play.

The next thing would be in high valued components — gears, shaft, power transmission, those kinds of things — heat lot control is typically mandated by the end user. If you have heat lot control and the unique data that goes with that, utilizing the strategy we just talked about is going to give you the ability of evaluating variation. If the primary source of variation is the material, that needs to be addressed. If the material is very consistent and yet you continue to have variation, there is obviously something in the heat treating process that needs to be addressed to reduce that variation.

Doug Glenn: Thanks for listening and thanks to Michael for presenting today. Appreciate your work, Michael.

About The Guest

Michael Mouilleseaux
General Manager at Erie Steel, Ltd.
Sourced from the author

Michael Mouilleseaux is general manager at Erie Steel LTD. Michael has been at Erie Steel in Toledo, OH, since 2006 with previous metallurgical experience at New Process Gear in Syracuse, NY, and as the Director of Technology in Marketing at FPM Heat Treating LLC in Elk Grove, IL. Having graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Metallurgical Engineering, Michael has proved his expertise in the field of heat treat, co-presenting at the 2019 Heat Treat show and currently serving on the Board of Trustees at the Metal Treating Institute.

Contact Michael at mmouilleseaux@erie.com.

Doug Glenn
Publisher
Heat Treat Today
Bethany Leone
Managing Editor
Heat Treat Today

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Heat Treat Radio #114: Decarbonization Demystified at IHEA’s SUMMIT

/ HEAT TREAT NEWS, HEAT TREAT NEWS INDUSTRIES, HEAT TREAT RADIO

Listen as Jeff Rafter, vice president of sales and marketing at Selas Heat Technology and current IHEA president, discusses the upcoming IHEA Decarbonization SUMIMIT with Doug Glenn. Scheduled for October 28-30 in Indianapolis, Indiana, the summit will address the challenges and opportunities of decarbonization for manufacturers. Jeff highlights IHEA’s nearly 100-year history in industry education. The event will feature keynote speakers from the DOE, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and John Deere, with a mix of technical and business content aiming to provide practical strategies for energy management and sustainability. Learn more in this episode of Heat Treat Radio, and learn more about this episode sponsor, IHEA, and their event at summit.ihea.org. 

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

The IHEA Decarbonization Summit (01:03)

Doug Glenn: Jeff, when and where is the summit? And what was the driving force behind deciding to do this event?

Jeff Rafter: The IHEA Decarbonization SUMMIT will be at the Conrad Hotel in Indianapolis, Indiana, beginning on Monday, October 28, and ending Wednesday, October 30.

The drive to create this event arose because the IHEA membership had often commented on, and lamented, the frequent inquiries they get from the client base across all sectors of manufacturing; clients are looking for clarification on the ongoing changes of the U.S. energy infrastructure and, specifically, how to manage the requirement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

There is a lot that is changing quickly in the U.S. energy infrastructure around renewables, electrification, and low carbon fuels. he IHEA board felt that it was essential to assist manufacturing members by trying to clarify these topics in an interesting event that presented the information objectively and provided a diverse array of all the decarbonization pathways available to manufacturers today.

IHEA’s Qualifications (02:36)

Doug Glenn: For those who might not know what IHEA is, what makes it uniquely qualified to present such a summit?

Jeff Rafter: I am proud to say that IHEA is a very unique organization. Many trade organizations do not have the long-standing success in supporting members that this organization has. The composition of IHEA, which is close to 100 years old, was originally made up of heating appliance and heating component manufacturers, who have spent most of our history focused on industry education as a service to all the member companies.

We felt that this was the perfect organization to take up the topic of sustainability and decarbonization because we are education focused. From that background and that bias, we are leveraging thousands of years of experience over a broad array of manufacturing options from traditional fossil fuels through electrification. Our member companies provide a very strong basis to deliver real-world examples of how to deal with reducing CO2 emissions.

Doug Glenn: And if I am remembering correctly, IHEA actually has a standing history of cooperation and working with the DOE on different things in the past, correct?

Jeff Rafter: Very good point, Doug. If you look back in history, before “CO2 reduction” and “decarbonization” became buzzwords, we spent a lot of similar efforts working with government organizations, research laboratories, and third-party organizations around topics of NOx reduction and trying to create a cleaner basis of industrial, manufacturing, and energy. In addition, we have always spent our time helping with business concerns regarding efficiency, not only operating successfully heating processes and appliances, but also making manufacturing more cost effective.

Keynote Speakers (04:44)

Doug Glenn: And speaking of the DOE, I see that there are some pretty high-profile speakers coming. The keynote speaker is Dr. Avi Shultz, from the U.S. DOE, and he is on the Industrial Decarbonization Initiative. Other speakers include Paulomi Nandy from Oak Ridge National Lab, Jeff Kaman from John Deere, and Tim Hill from Nucor. Can you give us a sense of what these folks will be talking about?

Dr. Avi Shultz
Director
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
The Industrial Efficiency & Decarbonization Office (IEDO)
Paulomi Nandy
Technical Account Manager, R&D Assistant Staff Member
Manufacturing Energy Efficiency Research Analysis Group (MEERA)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
Jeff Kaman
Manager, Energy Supply and Sustainability
John Deere
Tim Hill
General Manager Sustainability Solutions
Nucor
Speakers at the IHEA Decarburization Summit

Jeff Rafter: Doug, we are very excited to have the diverse mix of speakers that will make up the summit presentations. With Dr. Schultz and Miss Nandy, we are very excited to be providing a third-party opinion — government organizations and research laboratories — and they will be presenting on their views of the trends for the future of sustainability and decarbonization.

When we move to some of the other presenters like Tim Hill from Nucor and Mr. Kaman from John Deere, we also wanted members and attendees to take away from the summit real-world experience. These are not imagined or planned changes. We wanted companies that had actual experience with decarbonization — who had even taken actions towards net-zero positions — to share with attendees exactly how they approached the challenges.

Because, of course, some of the issues around sustainability are that it comes at a cost.

And how do you fund that? How do you research that? Where do you look for grants, and how do you make the business case towards decarbonization or any sustainability action for that matter?

Finally, adding to those two bodies of participants, we have a number of presenters speaking about real-world solutions today. IHEA’s view on decarbonization and sustainability is that there is a very broad set of pathways that you can take today with inexpensive, readily available technologies all the way out to longer term solutions like full electrification of processes.

There is more than one way to approach this challenge and do the responsible thing in manufacturing, which is to address our CO2 production globally.

Is Electrification the Only Answer? (07:25)

Doug Glenn: You mentioned electrification. When people hear decarbonization or sustainability, they often think electrification. There may be a lot of people listening saying, “I am primarily combustion. Should I be going?” Are only electrification solutions going to be presented? Or are combustion solutions going to be presented as well to help with the decarbonization?

Jeff Rafter: The answer to that question is, “Yes, you should be going, regardless of whether your focus and your background is in traditional fossil fuel combustion or electrification.”

The summit will contain a very balanced approach of different technologies, presented with no bias. The goal of this summit is providing education to help business leaders make better decisions around their energy management and their environmental concerns.

With that said, when we look at the body of what is available in the agenda, electrification is an important topic. But as a lot of people recognize, some portions of electrification are just relocating to a different fossil fuel further away from the point of use whilst other electrification options linked to renewable energy sources truly can come close to net-zero production of CO2.

IHEA’s view is that there are many sustainability pathways that we can all investigate or pursue.

Some pathways maintain fossil fuel basis. Some industrial processes will be challenged to move to an electric heating source. And then for other processes, electrification is the cat’s meow. So it is that broad sweep of diverse technologies that everyone needs to be educated on to make better decisions when the time comes.

Who Should Attend the Summit? (09:21)

Doug Glenn: How technical will the summit be; do I need to know heavy engineering, metallurgy, and things of that sort? And who should come?

Jeff Rafter: Traditionally, a lot of IHEA’s educational content has been directed at a technical audience; it was technical education about how various energy sources and heating appliances work, how to comply to code, and how to approach the application of that equipment safely. In this particular summit, we have changed course a bit in that we did not want this event to be a technical conference.

The idea of this summit was to make it a business conference because that is where most of the challenges exist when we look at sustainability efforts.

The content that will be presented is a pleasant mix of some technical topics because we have to get a rudimentary understanding of how these different technologies work. However, we are spending just as much time in the presentations addressing business concerns: How do you fund these various actions? Where can you find available grants? What are real-world examples of how other companies have approached sustainability or have begun an initiative internally? How do you get the support and the decision-making decided while moving in the right direction? When you look at the agenda that will be posted on the IHEA website, you will see that the topics range broadly from some technology presentations to real-world business concerns and how to make those business decisions.

Agenda for IHEA Decarburization Summitt, Monday – Wednesday, October 28-30, 2024, in Indianapolis, Indiana

Doug Glenn: How much fun have you had putting this summit together?

Jeff Rafter: I would happily report it has been a tremendous team effort.

I am very proud to say that a lot of IHEA member companies and third parties have stepped up to help us construct this event. We are really looking forward to it being a valuable event that provides a lot of information and important takeaways for participants.

Doug Glenn: I know you have put a lot of work into it. I have watched you do this over the last year and a half, and you have done a great job coordinating it.

Closing Remarks (12:34)

Jeff Rafter: I would just like to say in closing, for anyone who is thinking about coming to the IHEA Decarbonization Summit, please do. This is a very important topic for manufacturers, and you really need to take the approach of not waiting. It is time to get in front of changes in our energy infrastructure and the need to decarbonize some manufacturing processes. This is a great way to get educated and start your plan.

Doug Glenn: And I did remember one other motivation: If you are looking to stay at the hotel where the summit is held, the cutoff date for the hotel (you can still get into the summit even if you do not hit this cutoff date) is October 7th. So anyhow, appreciate it. Jeff, thanks very much for your time.

About The Guest

Jeff Rafter
Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Selas Heat Technology Company, LLC
Source: Selas Heat Technology

Jeff Rafter is vice president of sales and marketing for Selas Heat Technology in Streetsboro, Ohio, and has a rich history in the combustion industry, including Maxon Corporation. Jeff has 31 years of industrial experience in sales, research and development, and marketing; combustion application expertise in process heating, metals, refining, and power generation; and 13 years of service on NFPA 86 committee. He holds patents for ultra-low NOx burner design. Additionally, his company, Selas, is an IHEA member, and Jeff is the current president of IHEA as well as one of the driving forces/coordinators behind the upcoming Decarbonization Summit at the Conrad Hotel in Indianapolis, October 28-30.

Contact Jeff at jrafter@selas.com.

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Heat Treat Radio #113: NIST and CMMC: What Heat Treaters Need To Know

/ CYBERSECURITY, HEAT TREAT RADIO

Joe Coleman, cybersecurity officer at Bluestreak Compliance, discusses critical aspects of NIST 800-171 and CMMC with host Doug Glenn. Joe touches on how to become compliant, how long compliance takes, compliance pricing, and the limitations companies may face if not compliant. Learn more in this episode of Heat Treat Radio.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

What Is CMMC? (03:34)

Doug Glenn: Let’s jump in. Cybersecurity, while it’s not unique to heat treaters, is across all manufacturing sectors. But there are some unique elements of it that tie into the metal treating industry.

Let’s start with some basic definitions for those who don’t know: What is CMMC and what’s the purpose of it?

Joe Coleman: CMMC stands for Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification. And we’re currently on version 2.0. It’s a verification program to ensure that defense contractors and subcontractors are able to protect sensitive information from the DoD (Department of Defense). That includes FCI, which is federal contract information, and CUI — or some people call it “coui” — which is Controlled Unclassified Information.

Cybersecurity acronyms “cheat sheet” available as a free download. Click on the image for a link.

It’s going to affect about 300,000 companies in the U.S. Also, it’s going to start impacting companies later this year or early next year. That’s when it’s said to be fully released, and they’ll start adding it to contracts and RFQs and things like that.

Doug Glenn: So, in CMMC 2.0 version, the DoD is asking companies, “Do you comply with CMMC 2.0?”

Joe Coleman: Rather, it is saying you must comply by 2025 and at a certain level; there are three levels.

Doug Glenn: What are these requirements based on?

Joe Coleman: DFARS 252.204-7012 was implemented in 2016. In it, they were saying that people must be NIST 800-171 compliant by December 2017. If you’re not, you’re way behind the ball. They just haven’t pushed it until recently. Now they’re really pushing it. It’s based on NIST 800-171 recommendations — that’s Rev 2, and a subset of NIST 800-172.

Doug Glenn: You mentioned DFARS. Can you just briefly explain that?

Joe Coleman: DFARS is Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement.

Doug Glenn: Also, I’m kind of curious about this: Who’s actually pushing it? Is it the Department of Defense, or is it government in general, or is it controlled by (kind of like Nadcap and things of that sort) an independent organization outside of the federal government?

Joe Coleman: No, CMMC does cover other things, but it’s mostly by the DoD. They are the ones pushing itbecause of foreign adversaries stealing our information and ransomware attacks and things like that.

Doug Glenn: Right, okay. So that’s CMMC 2.0. Is NIST 800-171 is a sub part of that, or is NIST 800-171 something different?

Joe Coleman: That’s something different. NIST 800-171 is published by the National Institute of Standards and Technologies. DoD doesn’t have a lot to do with NIST. They are two different standards; the DoD is just borrowing NIST 800-171 for CMMC’s requirements.

Doug Glenn: I see. They’re using NIST’s package that’s already there as part of their requirement.

I think you’ve already kind of hit on it, but let’s just be explicit about it. What started the push by the DoD to require CMMC or require any type of enhanced security?

Joe Coleman: The DoD finally realized just how vulnerable defense contractors are and how vulnerable their computer systems and networks are to cyberattacks and to sensitive information being leaked by the DoD or contractors, that kind of thing. They’re trying to pull everything together to improve national security and to help secure this important data.

Doug Glenn: So, in a sense, it’s really the DoD just trying to cover their rear end, so to speak, and protect sensitive, national defense type information.

What Is DFARS? (08:45)

We talked about DFARs briefly. I’ve heard a DFARS interim rule mentioned. What is that?

Defining DFARS

Joe Coleman: That came about in November of 2020. It plays along with the DFARS 7012 — 252.204-7012. They came up with three new clauses to improve how cybersecurity is handled and enforced.

The first one is clause 252.204-7019. It mandates that you when you do your assessment: you come up with an assessment score based on 110 controls, and your score can be from a positive 110 (the perfect score) to a negative 203. That score needs to be turned into the SPRS, the Supplier Performance Risk System, so other companies can see what your score is.

So, 7019 mandates that you do turn in your score and that it can be no older than three years old. They are requesting that if they say you’re DFARS-required on a contract, things like that, you need to be NIST 800-171 compliant.

The next one is 252.204-7020. And that one states that you have to give full access to your company — your internet system, your IT, all of your information, and your employees, if they decide to come in and do a medium or high assessment or just an audit. You will have to turn over that control to them.

Doug Glenn: Who is “them” in this case?

Joe Coleman: It would be a DoD official.

Doug Glenn: All right.

Levels of Assessment (10:59)

Joe Coleman: There are three different levels of assessments that can be done under NIST 800-171. There is a basic level which you attest yourself. It’s all self-attestation for NIST 800-171. There’s a medium level which means you have to have a DoD official come in and do your final assessment. And then there’s a high, which you also need a DoD official to come in and do that. The majority of them are basics, which you can self-attest to.

Doug Glenn: How does a company know if they need to even have the CMMC?

Joe Coleman: If your company is a defense contractor, subcontractor, vendor/supplier, or if you’re in the DIB (the defense industrial base), you will need to be compliant if you process, store, transmit, or handle FCI or CUI in any way. If you handle CUI or FCI, you must become CMMC certified at one level or another.

Doug Glenn: Let’s just take an example. Say I’m almost third tier down in a supply chain, and the guy I’m doing business for is obviously doing defense work. Do I need to be CMMC certified at that point, even on the basic level?

Joe Coleman: Well, it depends on what type of data you’re handling. There is a flow down process. It starts with the prime contractor. Then it goes to the contractor and then on down the line. And if you are dealing with CUI or FCI, you need to have that same certification level as your client or as your contractor.

Doug Glenn: Would my client in that case, the person I’m doing business with, would it be incumbent upon them to tell me that I am dealing with FCI or CUI?

Joe Coleman: Yes. It would be in your contract.

Doug Glenn: If someone listening has a specific question about whether they’re required, I’m sure they could contact you and you could probably help them on that just to make sure.

Joe Coleman: Anytime. I also have an ebook that I made that is ready to be sent out, so I can always send them a free copy of that.

Doug Glenn: Now, I think you’ve already answered this question, but how many maturity levels are in CMMC and what are they?

Joe Coleman: A little, there are three levels. There is level one, which is the foundational level, and that is for contractors or vendors or suppliers that deal with only FCI. They do not deal with CUI. So, there’s a much smaller set of requirements for level one. And about 60% of the 300,000 companies will be going for level one.

Then there’s level two, which is advanced, and that is for contractors and vendors and suppliers that deal with CUI in any way. It can come in an email and leave. But as long as they have access to CUI, they need to be at least a level two certification. And there are about 80,000 companies that are going to be impacted by that of the 300,000.

Level three is expert, and level three is based on the 110 controls in NIST 800-171 plus a subset of controls that are in 800-172. Level two mirrors NIST 800-171. It’s borrowing all the requirements from NIST 800-171, enhancing them a little bit, and putting them into CMMC. So, there are a few more hoops you have to jump through to be CMMC certified.

Doug Glenn: We’ve talked about two different sets of levels. We talked about a basic, medium, and high. And then we talked about level one, two, and three. Are these things the same or are they different? Can you help me understand the difference between those?

Joe Coleman: The basic, medium, and high is an assessment level that assesses your whole system and facility, and that’s based on NIST 800-171. CMMC, you have three different maturity levels, and that’s level one, level two, and level three.

Doug Glenn: When you say maturity levels, that shows the degree to which your company has gone to implement these things.

Joe Coleman: Yes. It is a certification.

On CMMC level one, you can self-attest your own certification. Level two and level three, you will have to have it’s called C3PAO (or a CMMC third-party assessment organization). They will have to come in and do your final assessment. Bluestreak Compliance can take you all the way to that assessment audit ready. But then you’ll have to have a C3PAO come in and do the final audit and the certification level.

Doug Glenn: That was going to be one of my questions because you guys mentioned that you’re a registered practitioner organization. You don’t actually do the assessments, but you can get everybody up to the door, right? You prepare them for it?

Joe Coleman: Yes. You would need a CMMC certified assessor to do that.

Doug Glenn: All right. And when is all this going to be required? Right now, it’s not required but it will be required?

CMMC: Mark Your Calendars! Companies will need to prepare for the eventual implementation of CMMC level two certification. A phased rollout is planned to simplify the process; however, a shortage of registered practitioner organizations (RPO) may lead to a backlog.

Joe Coleman: CMMC is not required currently. It’s in the last phase of being released for approval. Either late this year or early next year, it’s going to be a phased rollout. Later this year or early next year, you’re going to have phase one, which is that if you need to be level one certified, you will need to become certified right away. That’s the one you can self-attest.

Six months after that, they’re going to start requiring that CMMC level two is implemented. This means you’ll have to go through the process of getting a C3PAO. And that’s when it comes time to hire an RPO (registered practitioner organization), because they’ve got the training and the certification to get you there.

Now, one thing on the C3PAO: there are currently only 54 C3PAOs in the entire country. So, there’s going to be a huge backlog. You could be talking a year backlog, so plan accordingly.

Finally, at level three, an enhanced version of level two because it has more requirements, you’re also requiring a C3PAO for certification.

What’s Involved in Becoming NIST Compliant? (21:14)

Doug Glenn: Joe, let’s talk for a second about the process, if you will. What’s involved in becoming CMMC certified?

Joe Coleman: That all depends on if you are NIST 800-171 compliant already. If you are not NIST compliant already, you need to get NIST compliant as soon as possible. That has a big impact on your CMMC implementation.

Doug Glenn: Can you address that then: What do you have to do to become NIST compliant?

Joe Coleman: To become compliant, you have to do an assessment on your network and your facilities to come up with an assessment score. So, it’s the same as CMMC.

Then, you will have to do a gap analysis. You will come up with a POAM list (a plan of action and milestones); that is your to-do list based on your assessment, your shortcomings, or what you’re not compliant to. And you’ll need to come up with a system security plan (an SSP). That’s mandatory; you cannot be compliant without an SSP.

Once you get your SSP and your POAM list, then you need to take your score, your beginning score/baseline score, and submit that to the SPRS. And that is the library that holds all of the scores and shows your level.

From there, you start remediating and implementing your POAM list. But that also includes coming up with policies and procedures, plans, and a lot of documentation — everything gets documented based on where you stand and where you’re going, until the end when you do your final score.

Now, the SSP is a living document. It’s going to constantly change. If you have a change in your network, a major change, you’ll need to go in and update that right away.

How To Become CMMC Compliant? (23:46)

Doug Glenn: So that’s how you get to be NIST compliant. For CMMC, is there more to it?

Joe Coleman: There’s a few more requirements in CMMC, but the major difference is that with NIST 800-171 it’s all self-attestation. CMMC you will need to have a C3PAO.

Doug Glenn: That is, somebody’s going to need an outside validator, so to speak.

Joe Coleman: And they’re very expensive.

Now, another reason they came up with CMMC is because people were saying that they were compliant to NIST 800-171, and they really weren’t. That gets into the False Claims Act and things like that. They really go after people that do that.

Doug Glenn: Yeah. Any sense of the time frame for either becoming NIST compliant and/or CMMC compliant?

Joe Coleman: If you are not NIST compliant yet, that can take up to 6 to 12 months. I’ve seen it take more. You can do CMMC and NIST together if you need to because you’re using the same documents. If you’re not NIST compliant, that can take up to 18 months or more. If you are NIST compliant already, you’re talking 6 to 12 months to be CMMC certified.

Joe discusses the limitations of not being NIST compliant.

Doug Glenn: Okay. You just alluded to it, but I just want to make it clear. Can you do them both at the same time in parallel tracks?

Joe Coleman: Yeah, I’m working with clients that are not currently NIST compliant. So, we’re just rolling it into one using the same documents. It’s just that we’ll have to have a different assessor at the end.

Doug Glenn: Let’s say a company just decides they’re not going to be either NIST or CMMC compliant. You can still be a company, right?

Joe Coleman: Oh yeah, you can still do business; you just can’t do business with the DoD. A lot of companies base it on how much of their workload or how much of their business percentage is based on DoD work or from a contractor or subcontractor. If it’s 1%, 2%, 3%, 5%, you need to take a good hard look and say, is it worth putting a lot of money into?

Cost of Certification (26:52)

Doug Glenn: So, they can still be in business and doing well, but they just can’t do any DoD work. So, any ballpark figures? And I realize this probably varies widely depending on the size of the company and everything, but any ballpark sense of how much change we’re talking about here?

Joe Coleman: There’s no official word from the DoD on this, but there are some guesses out there. For NIST 800-171 compliance, depending on your current cybersecurity program that you currently have and how involved it is, I’ve seen it from $15,000 to $60,000.

Doug Glenn: Okay. That’s just for NIST?

Joe Coleman: Just for NIST. For CMMC, and again depending on if you’re NIST compliant, if you are not NIST compliant you’re going to do them together, it could be over $200K (probably easily) to become CMMC certified because you’re also becoming NIST compliant.

Doug Glenn: I’m curious. How come it’s going to cost you maybe 3x as much?

Joe Coleman: One of the main reasons is that with CMMC, you’ll want to hire a registered practitioner organization to guide you through the process and to do the documentation for you. The other is the C3PAO. There are only 54, and they can name their own price.

I can imagine it’s going to be over $100K just for the final assessment.

Doug Glenn: Right, that’s helpful. I think that gives everybody a pretty good sense of what we’re talking about here with CMMC 2.0 and NIST 800-171.

What Can a Registered Practitioner Do for You? (29:02)

Your division of your company, which is Bluestreak Compliance (you’ve already mentioned you’re a registered practitioner), can you give a brief summary of what it is? What do you guys bring to the table?

Joe Coleman: A registered practitioner organization has been certified by the Cyber Accreditation Board (Cyber AB), or CMMC accreditation body. A registered practitioner organization (RPO) works with and hires RPs (registered practitioners) or RPAs (registered practitioner advanced). I happen to be an RPA. And we’ve gone through all the training that we need to have so that the Cyber AB says, okay, you are qualified to do this.

So, when I quote a job, I usually quote it two different ways. One way is just guiding you through the process, so you’re going to do all the heavy lifting. I can supply you with templates and things like that for your documentation and guide you through each step. Or I can quote it where we manage the whole process. We will do all your documentation for you.

Joe Coleman: “You’re going to have at least 1 or 2 full-time employees doing nothing but this.”

Your team will have to be involved in the implementation process. And that’s true both ways. But we normally quote it two different ways, and they choose which one they want based on their budget and things like that.

Doug Glenn: It sounds like what you’re bringing to the table is the ability to get that company from where they are now, wherever they self-assess to start with, up to the point where they can bring in one of the third-party auditors and actually have a reasonable shot at passing the CMMC 2.0 assessment.

Joe Coleman: Correct. And it’s going to take a lot of input from the client or from the companies, too, because you’re going to have at least 1 or 2 full-time employees doing nothing but this. You’ve got to build that cost into it.

That’s what I tell people when we say we can quote it either guiding you or leading the project. It’s not as much work if I am leading the project. But if I’m not leading the project, you’re going to need a team of people to do this. It’s a lot of work.

Cybersecurity Areas To Be Aware Of (31:48)

Doug Glenn: I’m not sure there is an easy answer to this question, but can you give a list of top 3 to 4, or 4 to 5, areas that a company needs to look at when they start doing the NIST and CMMC checklists? Where do you see most companies falling down, or what are the areas they need to be aware of?

Joe Coleman: A lot of the smaller companies do not have a robust cybersecurity program. That is going to be a big pitfall. That’s going to be a big jump for them, not just the work that they have to put into it, but the expense; a lot of small companies just can’t afford that.

Doug Glenn: So, for example, what does that program involve? I mean, is it best practices for handling emails?

Joe Coleman: Everything.

Doug Glenn: What are some of those things?

Joe Coleman: Some of the things are making sure that your network is totally secure and locked down, firewalls. Along with that, you’re going to need endpoint protection on all your devices, mobile device manager. You’re going to have to track every device that has access or could have access to CUI. You have to have a full inventory of that. Your IT system has to be locked down.

Now, this also includes your facility; it includes physical security. That’s talking about your door locks, your alarm systems, things that are going to protect CUI. Camera systems, your server rooms have to be locked down. It’s a lot of physical security, too.

Doug Glenn: Interesting. As well as the protocols for how you handle emails, how data is transferred, where it’s stored, and backups, stuff like that?

Joe Coleman: Yes. And you need to have a policy and a procedure for each one of those. They have to be fully documented every step of the way.

Doug Glenn: Wow. Okay. Sounds like fun, Joe.

Joe Coleman: It is. I enjoy it, but it’s a lot of work.

Doug Glenn: I’m glad somebody enjoys it. I think I’d be swinging from a rope somewhere; you know?

Joe Coleman: I eat, sleep, and drink it.

Doug Glenn: Well, that’s good, I appreciate it. The columns and things that you’ve written for our publication have been helpful to people, I know. And I think this podcast will also be helpful to them. But do you know, for those who are listening and might be attending Furnaces North America, do you know when your talk is?

Joe Coleman: It’s going to be on the 16th at 8:50 a.m., and it’s in room 222.

Doug Glenn: All right.

All right, Joe. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. We’ll look forward to more of your input.

Thanks everyone for listening.

About The Guest

Joe Coleman
Cyber Security Officer
Bluestreak Consulting

Joe Coleman is the cybersecurity officer at Bluestreak Compliance, which is a division of Bluestreak | Bright AM™. Joe has over 35 years of diverse manufacturing and engineering experience. His background includes extensive training in cybersecurity, a career as a machinist, machining manager, and an early additive manufacturing (AM) pioneer. Joe will be speaking at the Furnaces North America (FNA 2024) convention, presenting on DFARS, NIST 800-171, and CMMC 2.0.

Contact Joe at joe.coleman@go-throughput.com.

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Heat Treat Radio #112: Lunch & Learn: How To Use a Hardenability Chart  

/ HARDENING TECHNICAL CONTENT, HEAT TREAT RADIO, QUENCHING TECHNICAL CONTENT

In this episode of Heat Treat Radio, Doug Glenn discusses the hardenability of materials with guest Michael Mouilleseaux, general manager at Erie Steel LTD. Michael walks us through how to interpret hardenability charts and provides detailed insights on reading these charts, including addressing the importance of understanding the nuances of complicated part geometry. 

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Understanding a Hardenability Chart (01:59)

Doug Glenn: What I’d like to do is talk through this chart and learn how to read this a little bit better. And I’d like to ask questions about it because I’m not familiar with this, and I’m sure there are going to be some listeners and viewers who aren’t familiar with it. This will be just a quick tutorial on how to read these charts.

Go to the upper, right-hand corner. First off, SAE 4320H is the grade of the steel that we’re talking about?

The Heat Treat Lunch & Learn crew: Doug Glenn, Publisher of Heat Treat Today; Michael Mouilleseaux, General Manager at Erie Steel LTD.; Bethany Leone, Managing Editor of Heat Treat Today
Use this chart to follow along with the conversation.
Source of chart: Erie Steel, Ltd.

Michael Mouilleseaux: Correct.

Doug Glenn: Then the table right below that you’ve got percentage C (carbon). Is Mn manganese?

Michael Mouilleseaux: Manganese.

Doug Glenn: Thank you very much. Silicon, nickel, chrome, moly. My question is about those ranges. Is this basically saying the percentage carbon on the far left in 4320H goes anywhere from 0.17–0.23?

Michael Mouilleseaux: That is correct.

Doug Glenn: Okay. So that’s variability right there. All of those are basically telling you what the ranges are in those alloys in this grade of steel?

Michael Mouilleseaux: That is correct.

Doug Glenn: Then you go down to the top columns of this table below, and it says “Approximate diameter of rounds with same as quenched HRC in inches.” Right?

Approximate diameter of rounds with same as quenched HRC in inches
Source: Erie Steel, Ltd.

Michael Mouilleseaux: Yeah. Essentially, the first three rows are for water quenching. And the bottom three are for oil quenching.

Doug Glenn: If you go over to the second major column called “Location in round,” what’s the size of the round we’re working on here?

Michael Mouilleseaux: It can vary. Go down to where it says, “Mild Oil Quench,” then left to “Surface,” then left then go to “2 inches.” Then, go straight down to the bottom, and that’s approximately J5. So, the “Distance from Quenched End — Sixteenths of an Inch” is Jominy position 5.

Michael Mouilleseaux: If you go to Jominy position 5 on the left-hand chart, you can see the hardness limits for that; the maximum is Rockwell C 41, and the minimum is Rockwell C 29. So, the chemistry can vary provided the hardenability at J5 is 29–41.

Doug Glenn: That’s the acceptable range?

Michael Mouilleseaux: That’s the acceptable range. That’s one way of looking at it. The chemistry would allow you to do that.

Now, go back to the chart on the right-hand side and to “Surface,” move down one row to “¾ radius from center,” and go left to two inches. Moving down from there you see that is Jominy position 8. So, the surface of a two-inch round is Jominy position 5, and the ¾ radius is Jominy position 8.

If you go to the hardness chart on the left-hand side, that says that if you had a two-inch round of 4320H, and it was oil quenched, and you check the hardness at ¾ radius, then the expectation is that it would be 23–34.

Now, go back to the same chart that we were just at, and go to the “Center” row of “Mild oil quench.” Continue left to two inches, and that’s J12. Go back to the left-hand chart, and J12 is 20–29 in the center of the part.

So, the surface of the part could be 41, ¾ radius, center of the part would be 34, and the center of the part would be 29.And that would all meet the criteria.

Doug Glenn: The maximum for J5 would be 41.But at J12 you could get a 20 in the middle.

Michael Mouilleseaux: Right. That is one way to look at this chart. But there is another way.

Notice that it says “rounds.”There are some nuances to having flats and rectangles because, if you think about it, for the cross-sectional area of a rectangle, the hardenability is going to be determined by the direction that it is thinnest, not by the direction that it is thickest.

Take a gear tooth, for example: in the chart that we just made up the gear teeth, the root of the gear was about a half inch, just slightly more; and if we go to this same chart, go to “Center” of “Mild oil quench,” and then go to a “0.5 inch,” and when you go straight down, that’s the J3.

Is a gear necessarily a round? Of course, the answer to that is no. So, in complex shapes you can use this data, but you have to interpolate it in order to understand it.

To some extent, the first time you run this, you’re going to say, “I have a gear, and the root is a half inch across. And I know that the J3 is 40. And I’ll run this part, and I’ll section it and I’ll measure it and it’s 40. And I’ll say that’s a good approximation of that.” And experientially, you build confidence in this, that is, it’s your operation, your quenching operation, and your components. It allows you to interpolate these, and they become extremely useful.

So, is it definitive? No. Is it useful? Yes.

Doug Glenn: It gives you a ballpark, right? I mean, it’s giving you something, maybe guardrails.

Michael Mouilleseaux: It gives you a ballpark; it gives you guardrails. And I can tell you that after having run gear product in the same equipment for ten years, I can say that it’s definitive. I can say that if I have this hardenability, and I get this hardenability number for this heat, and these gears are made from this heat of steel, and it has a J3 of 42. If I’m at 38, I know something is going on other than just hardenability. And, at that point, I would suspect my heat treat operation.

Doug Glenn: Yeah. I have one more question about this chart: On the bottom right part of the graph there are two plot lines on there. What do those represent? I was thinking one represented the water quench and the bottom one represents the oil quench.

Plot lines representing maximum hardenability and minimum hardenability
Source: Erie Steel, Ltd.

Michael Mouilleseaux: The top one represents the maximum hardenability. And the lower the lower one represents the minimum hardenability.

Doug Glenn: That’s your band. Okay. Those are basically your values over on the left-hand side then. Very good.

I don’t know about you, but I found that helpful. I really didn’t ever know how to read these tables. So, maybe someone else will find that useful. Thanks, Michael. I appreciate your expertise.

Michael Mouilleseaux: It’s been my pleasure.

About The Guest

Michael Mouilleseaux
General Manager at Erie Steel, Ltd.
Sourced from the author

Michael Mouilleseaux is general manager at Erie Steel LTD. Mike has been at Erie Steel in Toledo, OH, since 2006 with previous metallurgical experience at New Process Gear in Syracuse, NY, and as the Director of Technology in Marketing at FPM Heat Treating LLC in Elk Grove, IL. Having graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Metallurgical Engineering, Mike has proved his expertise in the field of heat treat, co-presenting at the 2019 Heat Treat show and currently serving on the Board of Trustees at the Metal Treating Institute.

Contact Mike at mmouilleseaux@erie.com.

Doug Glenn
Pubisher
Heat Treat Today
Bethany Leone
Managing Editor
Heat Treat Today

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Heat Treat Radio #111: Heat Treat NextGen Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT TECH

If curiosity were a person, Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath would be her name. Having risen at Moog, Inc. to the position of materials and process engineer, Brynna shares her early STEM interests and how she stays up-to-date on industry trends and ideas. In this highly engaging NextGen profile on Heat Treat Radio — with host and Heat Treat Today’s publisher, Doug Glenn — get to know this talented metallurgist.  

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Meet Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath (01:00)

Doug Glenn: Let’s jump into today’s Heat Treat Radio episode with Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath from Moog, Inc. It’s a great pleasure to be here today with Brynna, who is one of our 40 Under 40 Class of 2023 award recipients. First off, congratulations on that award, and welcome to Heat Treat Radio.

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Thank you so much. That was an honor.

Doug Glenn: Brynna lives just south of Buffalo, New York. As you know, this interview is to get to know you a little bit more — how you got into metallurgy, heat treating, and all that good stuff. Let’s start way back. Give us a little bit about yourself as a younger person, maybe high school age and moving on up through, and then how you got involved with heat treating and metallurgy.

Check out Brynna’s 40 Under 40 profile. Click the logo.

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Sure. I grew up in a little town called West Falls, south of Buffalo, New York, and about 20 minutes from Moog. While I was in high school, I took AP chemistry and physics and fell in love with those topics. I knew from a younger age that I was going to wind up being an engineer eventually; I just didn’t know what kind. But I was pretty sure I wanted to be a chemical engineer, so I toured a couple of colleges.

At one of them, I met with a materials science professor to talk about the differences between chemical and materials science engineering. I was sold. I was all set and ready to go be a polymers engineer. I picked Purdue University, started going there, and was absolutely loving it.

The summer after my freshman year, I got an internship with Moog, which was right around the corner from my hometown. The internship was primarily metallurgical, due to the nature of Moog’s products, and I absolutely loved it. I was not expecting to like it, and it was just so great. So, I transitioned all of my coursework over to metallurgy, and I kept coming back to Moog for internships, and that was fantastic.

Learning from Industry Experts (03:32)

When I started off at Moog, it was right around the time when two of our subject matter experts in heat treatment were transitioning to retirement. I started learning as much as I could as fast as I could about heat treatment. There was obviously a lot to learn there, but it was a great time.

After working at Moog for a couple of years, I decided I wanted to go back and pursue my other passion, which was manufacturing engineering. So, right now I’m working on a master’s degree after work to combine metallurgy and manufacturing.

“When I started off at Moog, it was right around the time when two of our subject matter experts in heat treatment were transitioning to retirement. I started learning as much as I could as fast as I could about heat treatment.”

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath, Moog

Doug Glenn: Wow. You’re a classic overachiever. That’s pretty good. And you said Purdue, correct?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Yeah.

Doug Glenn: Okay. And you did your undergrad there. Did you actually end up graduating with a materials engineering degree or a metallurgy degree?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Materials science and engineering.

Brynna shares how she got started in the industry.
Source: Heat Treat Today

Doug Glenn: All right. Good. You spent the summers back at Moog and enjoyed that. You know, we see a lot of the older generation retiring, so you’re filling the brain drain, as we say, which is great. Are there are many other young people at Moog?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Yeah, their internship co-op program has been fantastic in bringing in a lot of students right out of college and getting them hooked on our product line and the sort of manufacturing we do. And we’re definitely getting more recent college graduates. But, you know, with people retiring, those are some awfully big shoes to fill.

Doug Glenn: For sure. What exactly does Moog make at your facility? They’re a large corporation; I know they usually make a lot of automotive, maybe aerospace, components but are you able to say specifically what Moog does there?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: We specialize in high precision motion actuation systems. From a metallurgical side, we’re working with a ton of really cool materials. So it’s not just steels or aluminum, it is a lot of aerospace applications, defense. The materials and process engineering group is physically orchestrated on our headquarters campus as well as the space and defense building, so we do get to see quite a bit of that. From the metallurgical perspective, there is a lot to see and work on.

Doug Glenn: You mentioned you were thinking about being a chemical engineer, but then you saw the materials. Do you remember what it was about that and metallurgy that attracted you? Anything specific?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I remember sitting through that talk with a materials professor at Purdue, and he was talking about what the day to day of a chemical engineer versus materials engineer looks like. I will not pretend that he wasn’t biased, because he was a materials professor. But the work he described for materials engineering was so diverse, and there were options for different settings and what you could end up working on — from being in a steel mill to working in a lab like I do. There are a lot of options, a lot of cool things. The slogan at Purdue was something along the lines of: you can’t make it without materials.

Brynna’s Family Background (07:30)

Doug Glenn: That’s really neat. So, I haven’t asked you about your family at all. What did they think when you told them, hey, I’m thinking about being a materials engineer or a metallurgist?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: My father is an industrial engineer, and my mother is a pharmacometrician, so they’re both in the stem field already. I think it was no surprise that I was going to pursue engineering and then, metallurgical engineering specifically. I think they were happy to encourage me to pursue any of my passions. And my father knew a couple of materials engineers and thought that it would work out for me. They were excited.

Undergraduate Research (08:16)

Doug Glenn: They were very supportive. That’s great. When you did your undergrad at Purdue, did you have to work on a final paper or any specific projects that were of interest to you?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I did some undergraduate research in the metallurgy realm. But my senior project for graduation was along the lines of characterizing shot for shot peening and the degradation of shot and the residual stress that it imparts. It was like a cool mix of FEA modeling with actually characterizing the material. It was a neat project.

Doug Glenn: Have you had to do any of that at Moog?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: There’s a fair deal of materials characterization. We have shot peening, but I’m not super involved with it.

Current Work at Moog (09:35)

Doug Glenn: Gotcha. That’s interesting. Can you describe what your typical day at Moog looks like now and what you’re working on?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Sure. My typical day is a good deal of talking with all types of engineers, explaining metallurgical concepts. Because we work on a lot of different materials, there’s a lot to understand there. A good portion of my role is talking with other engineers about how a heat treatment procedure works or what’s metallurgically happening, how to modify a manufacturing sequence, how to design so that the product’s going to work.

But then I also specifically work in a failure analysis lab. This could be anything from something’s coming off the manufacturing line a little bit wrong or something failed in the field. We’ve got a beautiful characterization lab full of all the toys that you could think of, including two SEMs and a chemical lab. There’s a good deal of analysis there, too.

Doug Glenn: You seem like a person who enjoys your work. Is there any specific story or instance of something happening, either in school or at work, that really made you happy that you were in metallurgy and heat treat?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Oh, goodness. That’s a good question.

I would have to say I’ve had a couple projects at work, without getting into too many specifics, where we discovered something new metallurgically that we didn’t know was happening before. And then working through that, how did we not know it before? What do we know about it now? And what are we going to do to utilize this new thing that we discovered and take advantage of it? From a heat treat perspective, sometimes that means modifying our procedures, modifying our fixturing, creating something new.

It’s neat to see the modifications happen and come up with the new parts on the other end. It’s been very exciting to work on interdisciplinary teams like that.

“My typical day is a good deal of talking with all types of engineers, explaining metallurgical concepts. Because we work on a lot of different materials, there’s a lot to understand there. A good portion of my role is talking with other engineers about how a heat treatment procedure works or what’s metallurgically happening, how to modify a manufacturing sequence, how to design so that the product’s going to work.”
Source: Heat Treat Today

Doug Glenn: Yeah. I’m curious about this. You’ve been out in the work world for how many years?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Three and a half.

Doug Glenn: Okay. So, you’ve been out of school and working four years, and the amount you know about metallurgy and heat treating now is four years’ worth. Does it kind of amaze you the amount of stuff we don’t know?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Absolutely. Metallurgy is an old science, but you know we’re still [developing] the tools and technology and it’s great to find out new things.

Doug Glenn: Right. A lot of people get involved and say, “Well, I don’t want to go into metallurgy and heat treat because it’s a mature industry,” but I was curious if you felt the same way.

It’s really quite fascinating because there is a lot that happens. Like you were saying at Moog when you discovered things, a lot of stuff that’s happening and we really don’t know why. The more we can discover about it, the better.

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Absolutely.

Top Industry Resources (12:58)

Doug Glenn: Let me ask you this. You obviously come from a smart family; you’ve got parents who are well educated, and you are as well. What are some of the metallurgical/heat treat resources that you use to stay current?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I think the best resource that’s out there is people. The network that I’ve been growing comes from a variety of different sources. I’m part of a few industrial committees, and it’s just a great way to meet people from all ends of the spectrum of metallurgy — from those producing the material to those making something out of it to the people who are going to use it all the way down the line.

Finding other metallurgists in those realms, and also through venues like ASM and our local Buffalo chapter — meeting people who have more experience than I do and have seen it before. If I’m seeing something for the first time, there’s definitely someone who spent their whole career on that. It’s really great to tap into those resources. That’s my number one.

And then my second choice would be the ASM handbooks. I’ve always got at least two open on my desk.

“I think the best resource that’s out there is people.”

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath, Moog

Doug Glenn: Those are great resources. ASM over the years has pumped out some very, very good stuff. Is there anything else about your work or your schooling that is of interest or excited you that you’d like to share?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I really liked working at Moog because it’s a cool application where I can use my metallurgical knowledge along with this new manufacturing knowledge that I’m building up. That was my favorite intersection with my undergrad degree. And now I get to actually try that out in a working sense. That’s been great.

Doug Glenn: And you’re doing a master’s in industrial engineering?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Manufacturing engineering.

Doug Glenn: Where are you doing that?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: The University of Michigan.

Doug Glenn: Remotely, I’m assuming?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Yes.

Doug Glenn: Very nice. And how far along are you, and how much longer do you have to go there?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I’m hoping to graduate in December, so I’m coming closer to the finish line.

Doug Glenn: Congratulations. That’s really good.

Rapid-Fire Round (15:44)

Doug Glenn: I want to move off of metallurgy and heat treat just to learn a little bit more about Brynna. All right, so these quick questions are what I call the rapid-fire round. Brace yourself. Are you a Mac or a PC person?

Digital vs. print?: “I prefer digital. I like to have all of my work life very organized by topic, and it’s way easier for me to organize everything if I have a digital copy of it.”

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I am a Mac person through and through. I love my Mac.

Doug Glenn: Do you use a Mac at work?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I wish, but no.

Doug Glenn: We have an ongoing debate here. We had a couple people that came into the organization with Macs, and I’ve always been a PC guy. So, anytime there’s a computer problem, we tease each other, “Well, that’s because you’re working on a Mac/you’re working on a PC.” Well, that’s good to know. And for your phone: Are you an Apple phone person?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Yeah, I’ve got an iPad. And I just got a new MacBook Air the other day.

Doug Glenn: You’re hardcore. Very good.

So, we’re a publishing company here at Heat Treat Today. And I like to ask this question: When you consume media, do you prefer hard copy or digital?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I prefer digital. I like to have all of my work life very organized by topic, and it’s way easier for me to organize everything if I have a digital copy of it. So even if it’s a print copy, I’ve been known to scan and file it the way that I file everything else.

Doug Glenn: Okay. Now what do you value more in work — a flexible work schedule or high pay?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I’m going to go with flexible work schedule. I’ve had some people close to me who have the high pay but no flexibility. And they’re the ones more jealous, so I’m going to go with that. I’ll take the flexibility.

Doug Glenn: That’s a great answer. Here’s one: Would you rather work remotely or in an office?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: In an office 100%, I am definitely of the variety that likes to be around people. I would rather have people to talk to face to face than doing it over Teams.

Doug Glenn: I kind of assumed you were like that. How did you handle all the isolation that came with the recent pandemic?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I was still in college at that time for most of Covid. Purdue was only remote for half of one semester. It was a reasonably short time. And then the rest of the time we had limited capacity in classrooms and things. But when I was coming back for my internships, our department was classified as essential. We were coming into the office every day, and that was good, I enjoyed that.

Doug Glenn: So, you didn’t necessarily really have a lot of the isolation or as much as you might have had.

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Yep.

Doug Glenn: That’s good. Okay, I won’t keep going down that road. I think that whole time period has been very impactful on our society. And I’m curious how people feel it has affected them.

I know you love working at Moog, but if you had a dream job, what would it be?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I don’t know. I think someday down the line, it would be cool to have my own manufacturing business. I don’t have a product in mind at the moment, but in my thoughts it has to do with metallic components and heat treatment, because that’s my passion. That would be great.

Doug Glenn: Very interesting, owning your own company and manufacturing something metal. You know what? That’s where it starts. You’re three and a half years out, and you’ve got time to develop more specificity over time. But that’s good to even know that you’re moving in that direction.

I assume you don’t work all the time. What do you do? What do you do in your free time? What do you like? What are your passions outside of work?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: The number one time consumer at the moment is that master’s degree. But then, you know, on a pure fun basis, my husband and I are avid golfers. And all of the very short Buffalo summer we’re trying to be out there on the golf course.

“But then, you know, on a pure fun basis, my husband and I are avid golfers. And all of the very short Buffalo summer we’re trying to be out there on the golf course.”
Source: Richard-7 / Getty Images Signature

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I’m also a bluegrass fiddler. I play in a couple bands. And that’s pretty fun, too. It’s almost Saint Patrick’s Day.

Doug Glenn: You’re a musician? You know, I’ve heard that there are some engineering schools who don’t ask you if you play an instrument, they ask you what instrument you play because there is a correlation somehow or other between music and engineering. Maybe it’s the methodical-ness, the orderliness, and all that stuff.

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Neat, I didn’t know that.

Doug Glenn: If you’re playing bluegrass fiddle, I assume you play some by ear. I mean, I assume you’ve got some sort of natural talent there. Is that safe to say?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Yeah, I started that at a decently young age. And now my husband and I are learning piano as well, so it’s been fun.

Doug Glenn: What does your husband do by chance?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: He’s a software engineer.

Doug Glenn: Two engineers in one house. That’s got to be interesting dinner time talk. That’s wonderful.

Okay. Last question for you. I give people an option here. You can answer any one of these three. What would be your favorite app, movie, or magazine?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: The first thing that came to my mind when you asked that question was Audible. At the moment, I’m hooked on reading, or listening, to a lot of books. I consider it reading in the little bits of downtime here and there grocery shopping and driving in the car and things like that. It’s nice to spend that time a little bit more productively.

Doug Glenn: I’m with you. I think that’s great. I assume maybe you can even do some of your school reading on Audible?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I haven’t tried that yet. Honestly.

Doug Glenn: Sometimes people learn better by actually reading. But other people learn better by listening, so that’s fine.

If you were to encourage young people to really look into metallurgy materials, what would you tell them? What would be your encouragement to them?

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: I think the most impactful thing for me at that age was actually getting to see what they do. At Moog, I act as a tour guide for a lot of high school students. I try to show them as closely as possible what we do and what a day looks like. Because it’s great to think about the theory, but at the end of the day when you graduate with that degree, you’ve got to go work. I encourage high school students to get out there and see as many jobs as possible. Shadow people — I guess that would be my advice.

Doug Glenn: That’s good. Well, Brynna, thanks so much. Congratulations again on being awarded 40 Under 40 this last year. And thanks for taking some time to chat with us.

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath: Thank you so much.

About The Guest

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath
Materials and Process Engineer
Moog, Inc.
Source: Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath

Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath received her bachelor’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the Purdue University Honors College. She is currently working on a master’s degree in Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Brynna conducts metallurgical support for day-to-day heat tree issues and non-conformances across several divisions within Moog, Inc. She was recognized in Heat Treat Today’s 40 Under 40 Class of 2023.

Contact Brynna by visiting Moog, Inc.’s website: www.moog.com.

Search Heat Treat Equipment And Service Providers On Heat Treat Buyers Guide.Com

Heat Treat Radio #111: Heat Treat NextGen Brynna Keelin Kelly-McGrath Read More »

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Heat Treat Radio #110: Isolated Heat, the Future of Vacuum Furnaces

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT NEWS, VACUUM FURNACES

Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, and guest Bryan Stern from Gasbarre Thermal Processing Systems discuss the shift from single chamber batch furnaces to isolated heat vacuum furnaces. They explore the benefits and challenges of isolated heat systems, including temperature control, cycle times, and cost effectiveness for handling various parts. 

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Introduction to Isolated Heat Vacuum Furnaces (00:01:30)

Doug Glenn: We want to talk about something that Gasbarre is calling isolated heat furnaces. In this case, these are vacuum furnaces. What’s an isolated heat vacuum furnace? And why is it called “isolated heat?”

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Bryan Stern: To start off, this isn’t something that’s Gasbarre specific. This is a generic distinction and concept with furnaces. It’s been around for a while, but the primary difference with an isolated heat furnace is that the heat chamber in that furnace stays at temperature, in between processing and throughout the process, and it’s held under vacuum during that time as well.

Doug Glenn: Gotcha. We’re going to talk primarily about vacuum furnaces — though, I know that’s also possible in an atmosphere — and the typical vacuum furnace today is the single-chamber vacuum furnace. Maybe it’s obvious already, but can you explain the differences between the isolated heat and a typical single chamber?

Bryan Stern: The single-chamber, batch processing furnace is by far and away the most prevalent technology that’s used. And the difference is that everything in that process is going to happen in a sequential order — everything from loading, evacuating the chamber, ramping everything (the chamber and the work) up to temperature, holding it, doing whatever process you have, cooling it back down, backfilling it, and then unloading it. It’s all a sequential operation. You close the door, the work sits in the same place, and you run through the entire process.

gray vacuum oil quench furnace from Gasbarre
Gasbarre’s Vacuum Oil Quench Furnace, with isolated graphite heating chamber, includes 2 BAR gas quench capabilities.
Source: Gasbarre Thermal Processing Systems

Whereas, with the isolated heat, it remains at temperature. That requires three primary additional components in addition to your single-chamber batch. It requires an extra chamber, for evacuating because you’re going to need an antechamber or a way to load that work in after having pumped it down. So, by default you need a second chamber. You need some kind of dynamic sealing door between the two chambers that you can open once your evacuation chamber is pumped down; and you need some means of moving the work between those two chambers.

These are the fundamental differences. But where it gets interesting is the impact it has on the rest of operations and efficiency.

Doug Glenn: The single chamber has dominated the market for a long time. How have those single-chamber furnaces really affected the design of vacuum furnaces? And are there some significant design differences in these isolated heat furnaces?

Bryan Stern: Yeah. It’s kind of funny, but anyone who’s familiar with single-chamber batch furnaces recognizes there are a lot of challenges to doing vacuum processing that way.A simple way to look at it is if you were trying to cook pizzas in an oven: But if you had to start with the oven cold, open the door, put the pizza in, and then you can’t touch it until the whole thing goes through its process; you heat up the oven and then wait till it cools down at the end and pull it out. It wouldn’t be an ideal approach.

A simple way to look at it is if you were trying to cook pizzas in an oven: But if you had to start with the oven cold, open the door, put the pizza in, and then you can’t touch it until the whole thing goes through its process; you heat up the oven and then wait till it cools down at the end and pull it out. It wouldn’t be an ideal approach.

Bryan Stern, Gasbarre

That’s the distinction with the vacuum portion of it specifically. For a lot of single-chamber batch equipment, you have to pump it down and wait to preheat the oven. That adds a lot of time. So, the then it makes vacuum processing more expensive, and it’s harder to scale. People know there is inconvenience around vacuum processing in general. And the answer to that has typically been to increase workload sizes because if you’re going to have dead time at the front, you’d rather distribute that cost over a thousand parts instead of a hundred parts.

You want to increase the throughput so you’re not waiting for a bunch of little batches and paying for all that dead time with a few parts.

Equipment Challenges with Single Chamber (00:06:32)

Bryan Stern: There’s been a general trend to just increase load sizes, and I am generalizing. It’s not necessary for everything. But you get into some massive single-chamber batch furnaces that are often larger than necessary for the parts. And, unfortunately, those load sizes are kind of detrimental to a lot of the objectives of heat treating.

You have a much more difficult time maintaining uniformity for both process temperature and gas for the parts while you’re heating up and cooling down. And you’re going to have a much higher deviation between the temperature at the center of the load and the surface of the load, as well as process gas concentrations.

That trend toward larger load sizes than necessary (because of the inherent challenges of the single-chamber batch method) leads to other challenges that you then have to overcome. It takes longer to soak out, and quite often (something that I’m sure a lot of people will be familiar with) you end up leaving gaps in the work zone anyway — spaces between parts to allow gas circulation to achieve quench rates enabling you to cool faster because you’re not getting enough gas to the center of the load. Since you have these massive loads, you’ve moved in a direction that’s not really helping anything that you’re trying to do. And that’s a bus that we’ve all been on.

Doug Glenn: So, you’ve got uniformity issues inside the load. And that’s an interesting perspective. The process takes so long inside that one chamber, it tends to increase the size of the load so that you’re doing more at once.

How about the efficiency of the process? If you’ve got a chamber that is designed just for isolated heat, and you’re just heating in that chamber, I would assume that chamber can be designed differently than a chamber in which you’re going to do preheat convective.

Bryan Stern: Absolutely. There are of trying to do everything in one space. I think the equipment challenges come from exactly what you’re talking about — trying to heat and cool in the same space. Anyone who’s been remotely involved in the production of single-chamber batch equipment knows that you’re doing a bunch of things that are in tension with one another. To start, if you’re trying to cool in the same space, very often you’re putting nozzle penetrations all through your insulation pack.

Right away you’ve shot your thermal efficiency in the foot because you have direct radiation out of those nozzles. And people have tried with marginal success to come up with ways of sealing off those nozzles during the heating section and opening them during cooling. Some tried more static approaches, some active changes to the furnace.

But the other issue is that you’re hurting the cooling, too, because you’re restricting your gas flow. You’re heating up the gas that you’re trying to cool with by flowing it through this hot insulation pack. Your parts are sitting inside that heat cage. They’re radiating to a hot surface. Another thing worth pointing out is that often with a single-chamber batch, because you have such a limited time to pump down and you’re trying to decrease your cycle time as much as possible, the installation’s reduced just to help with vacuum levels.

Again, if you’re holding that under vacuum and you can allow it to outgas and decay, now you can have a much thicker insulation pack. You’re not putting penetrations through it. So, it’s helping your thermal efficiency in multiple ways. For example, it’s helping your cooling. When you’re struggling to get those cooling rates, you’re going to do things like bump up gas pressure. Since you’re consuming more processed gas, you’ll put a bigger motor in it — which not only costs more upfront, but it also costs more to run.

That’s a fun fact about especially high horsepower, single-chamber batch equipment: Very often the current rating for the entire system can be driven by the gas blower alone. It’s more than all the rest of the power supply, so they’re not cheap to run.

I’m not saying that you get away with half the size motor, but intuitively you know you’re requiring more than you would need if you placed that load in a dedicated cooling space, no response to gas flow radiating to a water cool jacket. So, it’s a pretty intuitive observation about the way we’re currently approaching this.

Doug Glenn: I don’t think people have thought about it because that has not been the typical way of doing it. It’s almost all single chamber.

Bryan Stern: We’re locked in there.

Doug Glenn: But when you do start thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense that your efficiencies would improve — design and operational efficiencies. All those things would improve because you’ve got dedicated chambers.

Bryan Stern: Another thing with regard to efficiency is your size and your power supply to overcome all those losses, the decreased insulation. When you move to dedicated positions, you know in your position that ramping your power supply can be sized for it. And people have worked to overcome that with typical power supply sizing by doing things like adding multiple taps on the secondary side of the transformer to try to get a better power factor. But if you’re dedicating stations within your equipment, then you can right-size your power supply.

Two men (Doug Glenn, Bryan Stern) talking, HTR banner on top
Bryan Stern: “When you move to dedicated positions, you know in your position that ramping your power supply can be sized for it. And people have worked to overcome that with typical power supply sizing by doing things like adding multiple taps on the secondary side of the transformer to try to get a better power factor. But if you’re dedicating stations within your equipment, then you can right-size your power supply.”

Recent Developments (00:13:21)

Doug Glenn: That brings me to a question about the single-chamber vacuum furnaces that have typically been used. To my knowledge, there are not a lot of isolated heat furnaces or dedicated chamber vacuum furnaces out there, although, I know that one of the companies you guys acquired years ago made their name there. But have there been any developments in recent years that have led to more popularity for, or the possibility of doing, isolated heat vacuum furnaces?

Bryan Stern: Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s something that I’ve done a lot of thinking about because we tend to have a mentality with technology that if it was such a great idea, people would be doing it. So, why aren’t more people doing this?

We can learn a lot from looking at another industry. Specifically, the prevalence and immersion of some of the emissions regulations that are coming along is newer to our industry. I think we’ve been able to get away with doing things in a way that might be really inefficient for a while. But it’s not new in some other industries.

There is a great example that I love because it has so many analogies for what we’re looking at in vacuum heat treating specifically: If you look at the history of the adoption of fuel injection in the automobile industry — I’ve always assumed that fuel injection was adopted as soon as it came along because it was a better technology, and it had been around since the 1920s and 30s.

It was developed and used in some military applications, and right away it was hailed as a better technology. It was more efficient, it was cleaner, but people just didn’t want to change. That wasn’t the direction that everyone was moving in. There were some manufacturers that tried. There were some mass-produced vehicles that had fuel injection in the early 1950s, but it still wasn’t taking off.

And then in 1970 the pushed manufacturers specifically to start adapting it more. But it wasn’t welcome. Some supporting technologies needed to be developed better, especially with computers controlling those systems. As reliability increased for those throughout the ‘80s, there were some amendments to the Clean Air Act from 1970. Then it really started to hit the market and be adopted. And what finally sent it is that consumers started to experience the benefits.

Now we don’t even think twice about it. It’s the de facto standard. You’re not going to go find a car dealership in your area that has their specialty line of carbureted vehicles. There are still places they’re used, but the advantages of fuel injection are so great because you’ve got dramatically improved fuel efficiency and much longer engine life. People say cars last way longer than they used to. And it’s because this new technology that had been around for almost a century, by the early 2000s, had been sitting around, and people hadn’t experienced the advantages of it.

One of the things that I love about that analogy is that it also demonstrates this isn’t a complete switch. It’s a gradual change, and there’s still a place for the old technology. It doesn’t mean that isolated are going to completely replace single-chamber batch vacuums. But if you look at the places carbureted engines are still used, you’ll find them on a racetrack or in lawn equipment.

So, in these places where the upfront cost is really important and you’re not getting enough operating time on it, the improved efficiency is not going to pay off if you were to pay up-front since you’re not using it enough. That carries over well to some of the single-chamber batch vacuums because they will always be around, and they’re going to be more preferred for intermittent use applications where the runtime is not as long.

Doug Glenn: That’s an interesting perspective. Have any of the technologies developed recently — like transfer mechanisms, control systems, or anything of that sort? Is there anything substantially new that had to take place before you could get isolated heat furnaces, or have most of those technologies, similar to the fuel injection, been around for a long time?

Bryan Stern: I think they’ve been around like that analogous technology adoption. There’s certainly going to be a refinement of some technologies to be robust for it to work.

screenshot of smiling bearded man with 40U40 profile
Click on the link to read more about Bryan Stern in his Heat Treat Today 40Under40 profile.

There are some good solutions out there. There are some bad solutions out there. And I think the higher possibility of getting into a bad solution with a less mature product is one of those obstacles people are facing. Things don’t change when forces are in equilibrium. So, the fact that we’re not changing as an industry to adopt some of this stuff just means that the forces motivating that change have not overcome the obstacles. There are definitely some obstacles to it.

And I’m sure we’ll get into talking about those some, but we have that nudge from regulation that’s happening. We’ll see, and continue to see, this type of product mature and those dynamic sealing mechanisms and transfer systems. And I think what’s really going to send it is that there are a lot of benefits that address a lot of problems that we’re all familiar with. It’s just not the de facto standard.

There are ways that the industry is organized around the methods that we use currently. A great example of that is the pizza example where you look at the back of the box of pizza, and you’ve got a recipe that says to preheat the oven and then pop it in for 15 minutes. If you can’t do that anymore, and you have to put the pizza in while the oven is cold and let it ramp up, now you have to change the recipe. And that’s the way we’re organized right now. We’re organized with processes for material that’s starting cold. It’s actually a harder way to do things, because the way that different equipment ramps up is harder to control. So, it’s not necessarily a better recipe, but it’s what we have.

The vacuum level specifications are another big impact. In single-chamber batch equipment, you’re exposing it to atmosphere every cycle, and you’ve got to pump it down quickly. So even when you pump it to very low vacuum levels, what’s left is still often oxidizing constituents.

If you can hold it at vacuum (even though it’s not getting to the same ultra-low pressures), and if it’s allowed to absorb from the surfaces and outgassing from materials (even at a higher pressure), you can have a pure environment. And that’s really counterintuitive. It’s not built into equipment specs because people associate the vacuum level with purity, and it’s really more about dew point and the constituents of what’s in the gas. You can have just as pure an environment with much higher pressure. And again, we’re just not organized around that right now.

Continuous and Non-Continuous Systems (00:21:56)

Doug Glenn: Let me restate something you said earlier and tell me if I’m accurate on it. You were saying that because of the single-chamber vacuum furnaces, we tend to increase the load sizes. So, I’m assuming the load size of the isolated heat furnaces could be significantly smaller and, therefore, have better uniformity within the load, both in the heat up and the quench. Is that an inherent advantage of the isolated heat?

Bryan Stern: It’s not specific to all isolated heat equipment. We’d have to get into discussing the fact that you can’t have continuous and non-continuous isolated heat systems. And it’s an important distinction. The distinction being that you have your heat chamber, you’re keeping it at temperature in a multi-chamber batch system, which is still a form of isolated heat equipment. You’re going to be moving your work in and out the same direction.

So, you’ll get a lot of the advantages that we’ve talked about. You’re able to have dedicated design for heating and cooling. You’ll have your thermal efficiency. There are a couple things you’re not going to get. You’re not going to be able to increase the throughput. Whereas, if you move to a continuous furnace where you’re moving that work in, and then you’re moving it to the other side . . . We can keep working with the pizza analogy: If you need more pizzas, and it takes 15 minutes for a pizza, you can move it through three stations for five minutes per station. Now, you’re getting a pizza every five minutes instead of every 15 minutes, right? If you’re able to do that and produce loads faster, then you can decrease the load size. And then you’re going to see all the benefits of decreasing that load size — improved uniformity, faster times, and better cooling.

red lettering and green lettering to the right of a red flame with green arrows circling it
Click on the image to read “Vacuum Heat Treating in a Carbon-Conscious Market” by Bryan Stern, in Heat Treat Today’s November 2023 Sustainability issue.

But you only get that if you go to continuous. With that specific type of isolated heat equipment, versus just any isolated heat equipment, you’ll get much better thermal efficiencies because in the multi-chamber batch setup you’re not heating and cooling the furnace every time and throwing that energy away. But because you’re loading and unloading on the same size, you’re still going to leave that heat chamber unoccupied, sitting and holding its temperature, consuming energy in between loads. With continuous furnaces, you’re not going to do that. You’re never going to throw all that energy away. There’s minimal holding power required. So, there is a distinction between the continuous and non-continuous isolated.

Doug Glenn: How would it work with a non-continuous isolated heat furnace? If the process required you to preheat, heat, and quench, what is it you’re going to use? Transfer cars? How does that work?

Bryan Stern: If you have multiple heating levels, you can still control the heat. But often you’d introduce it at an intermediate temperature and then ramp it up the rest of the way. So again, all the advantages that you get as far as quenching, typically with a two-chamber piece of equipment like that, your quench chamber is going to serve double duty as your evacuation chamber. You’re putting it into the quench chamber first, evacuating it again, and bringing it back and quenching it.

Challenges with Isolated Heat Systems (00:26:39)

Doug Glenn: These systems sound good, but I’m sure there are some challenges. Are there some drawbacks? I can hear some people saying, these sound like great pieces of equipment — especially the continuous version. I can understand the efficiencies, but what about the complexity? Is the design complexity of these units an issue?

Bryan Stern: It’s definitely one that I face a lot on the application side. It’s a much more complicated process — especially because the process itself is going to impact each of those positions. And you would care if I sold you an oven for your kitchen, and the only thing I cared about was that it can go to this temperature, and it can operate at this pressure, but I didn’t care what you did with it, I didn’t care how much work you get through it. I just had these maximum parameters.

As soon as you move to talking about continuous, you’re right away much more involved in throughput — going to drive and often the number of positions to get the index rate you need for the load size. Now you care how long each step of the process takes, and you’re trying to balance that among positions so that you’re not letting anything sit longer than it needs to because you’re over this particular soak time.

Trying to get continuous equipment sized for an application is more of a process than some people are expecting. And again, we’re just not wired that way. So, you can throw out a spec for a single-chamber batch furnace and say you need this operating temperature, this ultimate vacuum level, and this uniformity . . . and more! But when you come and want to get into a piece of equipment like this, we’re going to have a couple conversations — we’re going to talk about some things no one else is asking. And that’s what can be a hurdle up front, though we’re able to overcome it.

Two men (Doug Glenn, Bryan Stern) talking in split screen, no hands seen
Bryan Stern, Gasbarre, discusses furnace cost effectiveness and flexibility. “It’s just going to be a lot more expensive if you’re doing a process that doesn’t require the way that that furnace was built. So, it’s not that you locked yourself in. It’s just that if you’re constantly changing processes or you have much shorter processes or the throughput isn’t a benefit, then that’s where a single-chamber batch might be a better solution.”

Doug Glenn: But it also may limit flexibility, I assume, of the different processes you could run in that equipment, too. In a batch system, you can put the load in there and do whatever you want, it’s going to potentially take longer to get it done. But maybe in an isolated heat system, where the heat chamer is only designed to do X, maybe you can’t do X times two. Does that make sense?

Bryan Stern: Yeah. It’s not as much true for a two-chamber or multi-chamber isolated heat batch style furnace because you have the same flexibility of dedicated design. On a continuous furnace, but if you’re going to be doing that a lot, is it worth paying for something that can be optimized one way if you’re going to be using it in a flexible way. They have a lot of flexibility — I would argue just as much as batch. It’s just going to be a lot more expensive if you’re doing a process that doesn’t require the way that that furnace was built. So, it’s not that you locked yourself in. It’s just that if you’re constantly changing processes or you have much shorter processes or the throughput isn’t a benefit, then that’s where a single-chamber batch might be a better solution.

Cost Effectiveness (00:30:23)

Doug Glenn: And then the other objection that jumps to my mind is capital equipment outlay. Can we address that, compared to single chamber?

Bryan Stern: This is this is another one that’s near and dear to my heart because I think there’s a lot of misconception here since it’s very application specific and hard to answer generally. But like we talked about, you’re going to have another chamber.

So, if you’re looking at a smaller system, it may not immediately be more cost effective. If you’re looking at a continuous system that’s replacing several furnaces, now you’re not paying for that oversized power supply on each piece of equipment; you’re not paying for a pumping system for each piece of equipment; you’re just buying it for the one evacuation chamber. Or maybe you have a backup, but now you’re starting to distribute and be much more selective about your material cost, and there’s definitely a break-even point in there.

It’s really a question of whether or not the process improvements are enough of a benefit on the smaller size. But very quickly the upfront cost starts to lean in favor of the continuous, especially if you’re looking at multiple pieces of equipment.

But the bigger thing here, the thing that I feel more passionate about, is that we tend to get really hung up on the upfront cost. And I think that’s something that can be very detrimental to missing out on value. It’s very easy to say: I’m going to have this amount of revenue, I’m going to pay this for equipment, and I’m not going to dive into maintenance and operating costs — and that’s a difficult question to answer but is a huge piece of the puzzle. Yet we often don’t put in the legwork because the information is not readily available. And it takes a more sophisticated accounting approach to look at project value over the life of the equipment.

Intuitively, we know that you could pay more for something that would improve efficiency or throughput or performance because in the long run that would pay off. And going back to the car analogy, when is the last time you bought a car and didn’t pay any attention to the fuel economy on it? It’s hard to do that without a little bit more accounting elegance.

Intuitively, we know that you could pay more for something that would improve efficiency or throughput or performance because in the long run that would pay off. And going back to the car analogy, when is the last time you bought a car and didn’t pay any attention to the fuel economy on it? It’s hard to do that without a little bit more accounting elegance.

Bryan Stern, Gasbarre

So, you have to look at the cash flow problem, do something like a net present value approach. And when you start looking at the operating cost savings, the efficiency improvements, and then a huge one that people miss is in the single-chamber batch furnaces we’re heating it up and down. That’s aggressive thermal shock and cycling. A lot of design goes into trying to get components to last because there’s thermal ratcheting and things wear out super quickly. For these continuous systems that are just sitting at temperature, that goes away for the most part.

They’re still consumable products, but the maintenance costs are dramatically improved, and you can talk to people who are using the systems. But again, that’s not something a lot of people have experienced, and it’s hard to quantify. So, if you just look at the upfront costs then it’s easy to miss out. You’re looking for an aggressive payback because you’re just hoping it’s going to cover the operating and maintenance expenses versus actually factoring those in and saying that those overall for the project life are going to increase value.

Limitations and Benefits of Isolated Heat (00:34:09)

Doug Glenn: That makes sense. Two final questions for you here: Are there any types of companies out there where it doesn’t make sense to use an isolated heat type system, whether it be a double chamber or continuous or whatever? And are you seeing, from the activity of , any industries that really should be looking at them?

Bryan Stern: Answering your first question with regards to the limitations, there are a couple situations where you’re not going to want to be looking at isolated heat.

One of those is really large parts. If an individual part is going to take up your whole work zone, then you’re not going to be able to decrease the load size and go to continuous and match the throughput. So, very large batch applications are going to be an obstacle; large parts are one area that it’s not going to shine. We’re seeing the 36” x 36” x 48” work zone is the practical cutoff. Another is the ability to use work TCs to monitor internal temperatures of the parts. That’s possible with continuous equipment. You can do a data pack and record temperatures, but it’s certainly not as convenient. So, when it comes to R&D, validating internal temperatures, and processes that require that, that’s another hurdle and limitation of this type of system.

The footprint is another one due to a second chamber for a batch style process is probably going to be larger in the space that it occupies because you’re not getting smaller in the work zone. So, it’s a question of whether you have the floor space, and do the other benefits of that system make up for the space it’s going to take up?

gasbarre logo

Doug Glenn: Those are good caveats. How about industries that you’re seeing who really should be adopting these things that either are or ought to be?

Bryan Stern: I don’t think it’s super industry specific, but there are some processes that benefit. And just a couple would be anything with a really short cycle time, because the dead time is going to consume more of the process.

If you can eliminate that and you only need to be at temperature for a little piece of time, then getting the rest of that dead time to be in parallel with the process to increase your throughput makes you a great candidate. But on the other hand, long processes are also a good candidate. If you’re holding it at temperature for a long period of time, boosting that efficiency while you’re in temperature, and better matching a power supply to what you’re doing.

So, good candidates could have short or long cycle times, involve any processes that require tight control, or benefit from isolating them from the space. Censoring can be a good candidate for rising carbon trading, where you can now actually have a dedicated space that maybe even operates at a higher vacuum level for whatever you’re trying to do, or you’re not worried about contaminating the parts with whatever process we’re running, or you need a tight time control. So, gas processes like that.

Oil quenching is an obvious candidate because you already have two chambers most of the time and isolating it, maintaining it at temperature, and keeping it clean from any oil vapors makes it a great example.

For anything with expensive parts, you can minimize the risk by decreasing the load size instead of having a many thousand-pound load where if something goes wrong, you’ve lost it. And especially for applications where that can be a really expensive thing if something goes wrong, you’d rather have it go wrong with much less material at risk.

Doug Glenn: I would think traceability is also probably easier in one sense. With this isolated heat system; you don’t have a huge batch in there. You’re processing potentially smaller batches, and you’re able to isolate which batches are at what temperature or what kind of quench they go through. Those may be some advantages.

Bryan Stern: You had a very specific application for a client who was concerned with a lot of small parts and traceability down to each part, and we’re looking at that system. Anytime you have a high volume of work, if you’re looking at multiple batch, single-chamber batch furnaces to meet throughput, that’s one of the biggest indicators you really should probably be looking, or at least considering, these other systems. And any time you have a lot of small parts in baskets, a large single-chamber batch furnace with stacked baskets of tiny parts, you’ll probably have a lot of benefit.

Doug Glenn: I assume that if somebody is looking at purchasing multiple single-chamber furnaces, you guys would have some sort of a calculator to help them assess if it makes sense financially and process-wise to go with six batch furnaces or one continuous. Is that a safe assumption?

HTR logo, gasbarre 110, image of smiling man with slight beard, text about isolated heat

 

Bryan Stern: Yeah, that’s one of my favorite parts of the process is to take a specific application, go through and break it down, and put together that full project ROI where you’re actually starting to assemble what are we looking at for maintenance costs? What is it going to cost to operate? And now you’re starting to see at a project level, not just the upfront cost, which option is going to be best. And it is so application specific. It’s kind of neat to walk through that with a client and see what comes out the other end. Because at the end of the day, you want what the best solution is. It could be this or that. But when you can actually put that picture together for a process and assist someone with picking the best equipment for what they need for their process, that’s fun.

Doug Glenn: And just for the listener’s benefit, because we haven’t done a lot of talking about your company Gasbarre Thermal Processing Systems. You guys can provide either the isolated heat systems or, if you do the calculations on your handy dandy spreadsheet and it turns out they’re better doing the standard single chamber, you guys can do those, too. So, it’s not like you’re going to push one over the other but whatever makes sense. Right?

Bryan Stern: I see that as a huge advantage. You’re not going to get a bias of us at Gasbarre trying to push you into this because it is what we’re selling. We are able to wade through that decision with the client and help pick the equipment that’s best for them.

Doug Glenn: Helping them make a better choice, super, Bryan. Thank you.

About the Expert

Bryan Stern is the product development manager at Gasbarre Thermal Processing Systems. He has been involved in the development of vacuum furnace systems for the past 8 years and is passionate about technical education and bringing value to the end-user. Bryan holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.A. in Natural Science from Covenant College. In addition to being a member of ASM, ASME, and a former committee member for NFPA, Bryan is a graduate of the MTI YES program and recognized in Heat Treat Today’s 40 Under 40 Class of 2020.

Contact Bryan at bstern@gasbarre.com or go to gasbarre.com.

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Heat Treat Radio #110: Isolated Heat, the Future of Vacuum Furnaces Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #109: Making the Switch: Converting In-House Heat Treat Operations to Electric

/ ALLOY FABRICATIONS TECHNICAL CONTENT, HEAT TREAT RADIO

Electrification is afoot and is claimed to be a more sustainable heating source than natural gas. Art Moslow, electrification project manager at Kanthal Heating Systems, discusses challenges and options when switching heat treat operations from gas-fired to electric with Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Kanthal® and Electrification (00:00)

Doug Glenn: I’d like to introduce today, Arthur (Art) Moslow. Art is with Kanthal Heating Systems, and Art, first off, welcome to Heat Treat Radio.

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Art Moslow: Thanks for having me.

Doug Glenn: Art, just to give people a sense of your background, you are currently an engineering and communications professional for Kanthal, but you’ve been with them for 20+ years. And, I think, electrification project manager for Kanthal Heating Systems is where you are.

Art Moslow: That’s correct, Doug, for a little over 22+ years with Kanthal.

Doug Glenn: Great, that’s good.

I’ve got a few questions for you. One of them is: Is Kanthal seeing a lot more inquiries now about electrification than they have had in the past?

Art Moslow: It is a significant increase. And I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to meet with you, Doug, and discuss this — what would be viewed as a very important topic.

Over the years, Kanthal has assisted many companies and industries with the exploration and implementation of gas to electric conversions.

Initially, it was a demand from “heavy industry.” That’s kind of an industrial term that means very large projects in the steel and petrol chemical industries, and they’re typically looking for megawatts of power, which is a lot of power.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a significant increase from other industries like air pollution control, calcination, and heat treating.

Pit furnace with Kanthal® Super heating elements
Source: Kanthal

Heat treating represents a great opportunity for converting from gas to electric. A lot of furnaces have indirect-fired gas burners, heating tubes that then heat the furnace — so it’s radiant heat — and it’s primarily a big form of heat transfer for electric heating.

Kanthal has formed, in the last year and a half, a new group. It’s a global group within our company of sales engineers to assist all our different sales areas with gas to electric conversions. We saw that as a significant need. Our sales area and our clients were looking for more support. That’s the group that I head at Kanthal.

Doug Glenn: I assume, if they formed this group, activity is up.

The bulk of our audience are captive heat treaters, manufacturers who do their own in-house heat treating/thermal processing of some sort. What are some of the issues that they’re facing regarding decarbonization?

Art Moslow: Well, a lot of companies have global initiatives for sustainability. It’s not just an individual location, it’s more of a corporate initiative. Every facility, every location, is looking to contribute to their corporate goals of sustainability. We see in a lot of industries that a lot of furnace production or heat processing contributes significantly to CO2 emissions.

A lot of these companies have multiple furnaces at each location, and an ideal way to reduce their CO2 emissions is by converting from gas to electric. It’s something they can contribute to their corporate goals and objectives.

Electric Incentivization and Utility Companies (05:05)

Doug Glenn: Would you say the bulk of the activity that you’re seeing is being driven by regulation or by efficiency improvements? What’s the motivation?

Art Moslow: I’m not really a regulations expert, but there are a lot of local regulations where companies are being incentivized a little bit. In fact, there are some government agencies in the U.S. that are incentivizing clients to switch from gas to electric.

We have worked with utility companies — this is a little bit new for us — coordinating with utility companies that are incentivizing their clients to use electricity. The utility company wants to sell more electricity — they have a sales team — and so they work with their customers to help offset some costs to modify the furnace and upgrade furnaces to electric.

Doug Glenn: It is odd about the utilities. I’ve had experience with a number of utilities that are involved with the Industrial Heating Equipment Association (IHEA). They even have programs to help you reduce the amount of electricity that you use. Even though they are the sellers of electricity and they want you to use more, they actually are concerned with people being more efficient because they can’t take the load. The amount of electricity that’s being required these days is amazing.

Your point is good: Utilities are, in fact, providing incentives to companies to help them electrify.

Art Moslow: They provide incentives. A few of the utility companies that we have contact with have test labs where they’ll test equipment to prove out a solution to see if it’s something they can provide to multiple industries.

They might have a test unit to invite their customers to view it.

They’ll help source clean energy too. It’s always important when you’re converting from gas to electric, not just to shift the carbon footprint somewhere else by using “non-clean” energy — you’re just shifting it to another location, and you’re not really contributing.

Utility companies will help to source clean energy. So, when you’re converting from gas to electric, you’re reducing your CO2 footprint, and the utility companies providing you with clean energy help reduce the CO2 emissions.

Obstacles to Electrification (07:56)

Doug Glenn: For these manufacturers who have their own in-house thermal processing or heat treating, what are some of the major obstacles that they must overcome in order to get to a point where they can potentially be converting from gas to electric?

Art Moslow: A lot has to deal with challenges related to the idea of change. How can Kanthal really help and assist our clients to change?

You know, gas-fired systems work. We’re not coming in to say, “This doesn’t work, switch to electricity.” That’s not what we’re promoting. What you have does work.

It’s thinking of how we can improve the idea of sustainability and reduce CO2 emissions. We can help you do that, and it’s up to Kanthal to explain that and overcome those kinds of challenges. We prove to a client that this technology does work, and it doesn’t impact your furnace process. Switching from gas to electric does not mean now you have to make all these modifications to your furnace and your whole production process to achieve the same product yield or outcome of the production process. You don’t have to do that.

Doug Glenn: Does Kanthal help companies do an assessment of the cost-benefit analysis?

Art Moslow: Yes, we do. A lot of times, there are a lot of steps involved to convert from gas to electric. Even to present a client with an electric solution, we have to do a lot of background work like that to analyze their furnace process, to calculate the amount of power, in terms of kilowatts or watts, that is needed to energize their furnace and achieve their desired outcomes.

It’s not a simple action of plugging into an equation, hit an equal sign, and all of a sudden you have a number; there’s a lot that has to be done. And that’s what Kanthal does.

We run a lot of calculations, and then present that information to the client. That’s part of it: we want to show the return on your investment.

False Assumptions about Electrification (10:41)

Doug Glenn: Art, are there any fallacies or false assumptions that you guys tend to find you run into regularly that need to be addressed? If so, what are they and what do you say to them?

Art Moslow says: “The main challenge to overcome is proving how an electric heating system can achieve the same outcome as a gas-fired system, no matter what type of form of heat transfer.”

Art Moslow: Again, it’s going back to the challenge to change. The main challenge to overcome is proving how an electric heating system can achieve the same outcome as a gas-fired system, no matter what type of form of heat transfer. This includes radiant-type heating or even simulating a direct-fired burner. With the latter, you have all the convection, so it’s just the flame with the heat being transferred via air circulation; so, you can do the same process with electric heating.

Doug Glenn: I’ve heard some people have been concerned about the temperature range of electric versus gas-fired or the atmosphere in which the process is taking place and the sensitivity of electric elements versus gas-fired, and things of that sort. Can you address that?

Art Moslow: I would say temperature and atmosphere and heat-up rates — a lot of that contributes to the demands of the heating system.

For electric heating, you have very low temperature — a couple hundred degrees Fahrenheit up to probably a little over 350 degrees Fahrenheit. You can cover that entire temperature range with electric heating, whether it’s a metallic alloy that goes up to a certain temperature range, and then we have ceramic-type heaters like silicone carbide glow bars, molybdenum disilicide  Kanthal Super. You cover the entire temperature range with electric heating. Then, you can use those materials in different modes of heat transfer.

You have different modes of heat transfer for gas; you can do the same thing for electricity when it comes to radiant-type heating (convective or conduction). A lot of times, it’s a combination of more than one of those types.

It’s up to Kanthal to assist the client and help them select the right alloy or the right material. Some materials are better suited than others in different atmospheres.

Art Moslow, Kanthal

When it comes to atmospheres, there are a lot of different atmospheres other than just air. There’s nitrogen, hydrogen, there’s carburizing furnaces. There are all different types of atmospheres that need to be controlled within a furnace. Electric heating elements can operate under all of those conditions.

It’s up to Kanthal to assist the client and help them select the right alloy or the right material. Some materials are better suited than others in different atmospheres. It’s just ensuring that you’re using the best fit for that atmosphere.

Doug Glenn: I assume that Kanthal’s elements can also go inside of tubes, if they need a protective tube of some sort.

Art Moslow: Oh, yes. In a lot of heat treat furnaces (if it’s a gas-fired system), the gas burner is firing into a tube and the tube is radiating into the chamber, and that’s what’s generating the heat.

We have a few different types of heating elements that you can use when replacing the burner with an electric heating element right inside the tube. It’s the same mode of heat transfer and provides a high-power output.

You’re not really modifying the furnace that much in terms of its process and its temperature profile. You’re just replacing the heat source with an electric heat source.

Doug Glenn: Right, a burner with a heating element.

Preparing to Electrify (16:28)

Tell me, Art, what question does a manufacturer, who currently has a gas-fired furnace, need to ask to start preparing if they want to electrify?

Art Moslow: Typically, when we’re working with a client or manufacturer and helping them on this journey (converting from gas to electric), we put the process into four really basic steps.

Billets preheating in an electric walking beam furnace
Source: Kanthal

The first two are, kind of, the most important to prove a system solution. It involves calculating the power required, converting the BTUs to kilowatts.

As I said earlier, we’ll collaborate with our clients to do that, and it’s much more than just “crunching the numbers.” You really want to analyze the furnace process. You’re getting a full view of the “as is” state. What are they currently doing? What are they processing? What temperatures are they going to?

Perhaps we even do some analysis of the furnace. For example, you’re taking the temperature of the casing. Does the client want to make any process improvements? Is it time to replace some of the insulation? Can we make some recommendations to improve the efficiency of the furnace? We’ll also do a lot of thermal dynamic calculations and then provide that information to the client. This is, kind of, the expectation to achieve your throughput in the furnace or the specific heat-up. Whether it’s a batch furnace where you’re loading a product, heating it up, cooling it down, and then pulling it out, or if it’s continuous.

So, there are a lot of questions that we ask and a lot of analysis that we do. Then, we communicate that back to the client. It’s all presented to them — this is what we would propose.

After that, the next step is designing the heating system. I mentioned earlier that Kanthal has a very wide range, when it comes to temperatures and materials. There are times when an overlap of multiple solutions might work in a furnace, and it’s up to Kanthal to recommend solutions for clients. We’ll lay out: this is the ideal solution, this is why, and this is the payback.

We offer (that is, some clients ask for) CFD modeling (computational fluid dynamics). So, you’re mapping out the solution using a computer. It helps to reinforce the solution to lay it out for a client so they can see it before any kind of decision is made. They might have some feedback as to — oh, we see that this is possible; is there anything more we can do in the furnace?

A lot of times we see that a furnace is originally built for a certain process and a certain temperature, and, over the years, it changes. You want to get more and more use out of your furnace, so maybe you’re pushing the temperature higher than it was designed to, or you’re trying to increase your throughput. You’re putting more product through and pulling more out. So, maybe there’s a chance to do that even more, when converting to electric.

Instead of buying new furnaces or more furnaces, maybe you can get more out of your existing equipment. That’s where CFD modeling helps, as well. It helps us to really present everything to the client.

The last two steps are really specific to a furnace. It’s about removing the existing gas system, removing the gas train, which can improve the safety of the facility.

Typically, gas burners are very loud. We’ve had clients comment, “We don’t even notice that the furnace is on, if we don’t look at the temperature controller,” because there is no more noise when you’re running electricity.

All of that is specific to a client’s furnace.

The last step is installing the electric heating system.

Timeframe for Electrification (21:19)

Doug Glenn: This is a loaded question, and I’m sure it varies widely, but can you give an example of the timeframe that it would take to convert any type of furnace? Maybe one Kanthal have done in the past? There are a lot of batch furnaces that our listeners would use; there’s also a lot of continuous. And, of course, the size of each of those is going to make a huge difference.

Can you give the listeners a sense of how long it is going to take for this process to convert?

Art Moslow: Typically, the first couple steps take a couple of weeks. There is a lot of communication back and forth between the client and Kanthal. We’re gathering information, so we might have to visit a couple of times, and also coordinate with their utility’s supplier. Does the facility have the electric power available? How can they source it to get it to the facility?

Then, there are other components that are needed to electrify a furnace, like the electrical control system.

We have partners (other suppliers) that we know and work with who are very familiar with supplying controls to the appropriate type of heating system.

Different alloys and different materials behave differently when it comes to electric heating. Some controls require current-limit settings, some transformers, some don’t, so there are suppliers out there that are familiar with the requirements.

Different alloys and different materials behave differently when it comes to electric heating. Some controls require current-limit settings, some transformers, some don’t, so there are suppliers out there that are familiar with the requirements.

Art Moslow, Kanthal

Doug Glenn: And you work with them.

Art Moslow: We do. Typically, we work with them, we provide the client with recommendations, saying, “This is what you need.”

Kanthal doesn’t supply control systems. We do, for a couple of our products, because they’re unique, but we tend to work with other partners to do that.

The entire process could take a couple of months. Procuring and manufacturing all of the components is the longest part of the process.

Doug Glenn: As I said, it’s a loaded question because I’m quite sure it’s very dependent upon the process that the client is running, how long it’s going to take to validate the conversion, and whether or not your CFD modeling and things of that sort to really convince people that this does work.

Art Moslow: What is the size of the equipment, too? It’s not just the furnace.

And we want to fit it into the client’s timeline. When is their shutdown? To do a conversion, you can’t just do that overnight. The furnace must be shut down for a given amount of time to do a conversion.

When Not to Electrify (24:26)

Doug Glenn: This is a question where you have to be really honest: Are there times when people should not electrify? Are there instances out there where it just doesn’t make sense?

Art Moslow: There are times where a client might have a furnace that’s quite old, and the cost to convert doesn’t make sense. They really need to rebuild the entire furnace because the insulation is old and losing its integrity, and there’s too much heat loss from that. And the size of the system to try and fit an electric system into a given space just might not work.

We haven’t really seen the process like that other than when the client has a used furnace that they’ve been running. It doesn’t quite match the process they’re trying to run, but it’s a furnace that they had, so they just keep running it. It just makes sense and is more cost effective to replace the furnace with an electric furnace.

Doug Glenn: Are you finding that there are certain U.S. geographies where it’s much harder to get people to convert to electric simply because of the disparity between gas prices and electric prices, or does it almost always make sense to at least investigate it pretty much everywhere?

Art Moslow: You know, Doug, if you asked me that 5–10 years ago, I would’ve said yes, without hesitating. But I would not say the majority of our clients are in “this” geography or in “that” region of the U.S. It’s beyond the point of just looking at the cost of gas and electricity — it’s well beyond that now.

There are a lot of strong arguments about the CO2 emissions reduction, safety, and environmental aspects and benefits when it comes to sustainability that are really being driven at a corporate level now, especially in the U.S., which is a newer trend.

Doug Glenn: Yes, it is. As everybody knows, we tend to lag behind Europe in these things. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but that is the case.

Maintenance of Electrical Equipment (27:19)

I want to back up a little bit on the equipment and ask you a question about maintenance. Because one of the advantages, I have heard, is that there is potentially a significant advantage with maintenance and upkeep of electrical equipment versus combustion equipment.

As you mentioned, combustion tends to be pretty loud; that’s because you’ve got blowers spinning at who knows how many RPMs. You’ve got air piping, you’ve got gas piping, you’ve got mixtures, and all that stuff.

Can you address any major maintenance issues with electrical systems?

Hot rolling at Kanthal in Hallstahammar, Sweden
Source: Kanthal

Art Moslow: There are a lot of systems — like the example you brought up earlier, where you asked the question of if it is possible to put a heating element inside of a tube. For that type of solution, we have a proprietary alloy tube that Kanthal manufactures that goes to very high temperatures. We also sell an applicable heating element made out of the same material that’s designed for use inside the tube.

Typically, when you put in tubes, you’re isolating the atmosphere inside the furnace, and you put a heating element inside the tube. Inside the tube, it’s just air, so it’s very easy to replace the heating element when an issue like that comes up.

You do your safety “tag out/lock out” procedures; you secure power to the elements, and you disconnect them; you can pull them out, you can handle them when they’re hot, provided you’re following proper safety procedures; most, if not all, electric heating elements can be installed while the furnace is still hot; you don’t have to worry about thermal shock or overheating them; and they can be connected and run right away.

Most elements, too, you can mix old and new elements without an issue; there is no performance degradation with the older elements or the new element.

Doug Glenn: So, maintenance, generally speaking, seems to be a bit easier with electric.

Art Moslow: Yes. It’s easy to store a spare element; it’s easy to replace one. And, typically, we’re shooting for life that’s measured in years when it comes to electric heating systems. That’s our objective when designing a solution.

Sustainable Technologies (29:57)

Doug Glenn: Alright, coming down the homestretch here. There have been a lot of improvements in technologies over the last several decades to help with sustainability and things of that sort. Are there any newer technologies, materials, processes that you would like to mention that might be of interest to our in-house heat treat or thermal process people, when it comes to sustainability?

Art Moslow: When it comes to sustainability and ensuring that we’re meeting the demands of industry, in the advertisement, you had indicated that at Kanthal we do spend a lot of resources on R&D to continuously improve our materials to come up with new materials within a product — a grade perhaps, like new grades of moly disillicide Kanthal Super materials that meet the demands of the industry.

We’ve seen an increase in demand for hydrogen atmosphere furnaces and nitrogen. So, we’re constantly developing new materials to meet the demands of industry.

Art discusses the improvements being made to sustainable technologies, such as improvements to materials that are being used for hearing elements.

A newer product that we have, too, we call a Kanthal airflow heater. It’s a very high temperature air heater that’s on the market now that can be used in a lot of different industries.

There are a lot of newer applications that we’re looking into. We’ve seen clients wanting to duplicate or mimic the performance of a direct-fired gas burner. It’s just a flame-firing heat — it’s all convective heat — into a combustion chamber. We’ve had some applications for clients wanting to duplicate that using electric heating.

Doug Glenn: Do you know the temperature range on that?

Art Moslow: I can list it in degrees Centigrade: it goes up to about 1100/1200°C.

Doug Glenn: Any other new technologies or processes?

Art Moslow: No, that’s it. There are a lot of newer materials. It’s always really pushing the materials that we have on the market — so looking for higher temperatures, higher power outlets.

Final Thoughts on Electrification (32:49)

Doug Glenn: Last thing: Is there anything else for manufacturers who have their own in-house thermal processing or heat treating? Any other encouragements or thoughts you’d like to share with them, when it comes to sustainability in the conversion from gas to electric?

Art Moslow: Keep in mind that you can convert from gas to electric. And Kanthal can help you do that. We can assist you and collaborate with you to analyze your process and come up with recommendations.

Doug Glenn: This is a “tack on” question, here at the end: Is Kanthal involved, in any way, with reliability of the power grid? Are they doing anything to help? It’s outside the scope of Kanthal — I realize you are manufacturers — but the reliability of electricity is a critical thing for people to convert, and I’m just wondering if Kanthal is doing anything to help utilities make that supply of electricity more reliable.

Art Moslow: Kanthal is involved with providing heating systems to various industries that are making clean energy, like the solar industry and wind turbines.

There are companies looking at energy storage. In the past, that was really more of a theoretical-type idea as to how to come up with an ideal energy storage-type application, but there are increasingly more companies looking at, exploring, developing, and improving technologies that work.

Doug Glenn: Art, thank you very much, I appreciate it and appreciate your time.

Art Moslow: Thank you for having me, Doug.

About the Expert

Arthur (Art) Moslow is an engineering and communications professional, working as the electrification project manager at Kanthal Heating Systems for the past year. He has been with Kanthal for over 20 years serving in various sales and product engineering roles.  He received his Bachelor of Engineering in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering from State University of New York Maritime College. 

Contact Art at arthur.moslow@kanthal.com or go to www.kanthal.com.

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Heat Treat Radio #108: Heat Treat NextGen Humberto Ramos Fernández

/ HEAT TREAT RADIO, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT TECH

A leading heat treat and HIP processing director, Humberto Ramos Fernández has overcome business and technologic challenges to make HT-MX the successful commercial heat treat company it is today.

In this NextGen profile on Heat Treat Radio — with host and Heat Treat Today publisher, Doug Glenn — we’re learning the heart of an engineer, from early education and metallurgy interests to cycling and how-to-start-a-business.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

 

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Meet Humberto (00:00)

Doug Glenn: Well, welcome everyone to another Heat Treat Radio episode. We have the great privilege today of having another one of our 40 under 40 award recipients here to tell us a bit about himself.

Contact us with your Reader Feedback!

So, Humberto, I would like for you to tell us your name and tell us a little bit about your upbringing. Where were you educated, for example?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: My name is Humberto Ramos Fernández. I'm born and raised here in Chihuahua, Mexico. I've spent my whole childhood living here, and when I went to college, I moved to , Mexico, had my degree there, and then spent a few years working around there. For a little while, I lived in Houston, Texas. I also lived in Australia for a little bit. I spent a few months in Argentina as well, and then got back to working in Monterrey, and eventually moved back to Chihuahua, where I'm currently living. I am very happy to be here, actually.

Doug Glenn: Do you have a family? I know you have parents, obviously. But married, kids, the dog, a cat. What do we have actually?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: I am actually engaged. I am about to get married in September later this year.

Humberto shares about coming from a family of engineers.

Doug Glenn: Congratulations! Very nice, very nice. Yeah, best to you. That's great.

What was it that first made you think about metallurgy or heat treatment, that type of stuff?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: Well, I always knew I would want to be an engineer. My dad's an engineer. My brother is an engineer. Since a very young age, I've always been into cars and racing and stuff like that. So, engineering and mechanical engineering was kind of an obvious choice for me when deciding my degree after high school.

I never really thought of metallurgy as a career; it was kind of more of a business choice or business decision. When I started as a mechanical engineer I was very interested in the mechanical aspect of the parts and design more than the metallurgy.

But eventually, while still working in Monterrey, I had the opportunity to come back home in Chihuahua and visit for a weekend. I got submerged in the environment of business leaders where there were a lot of opportunities for businesses — one of those was heat treating.

That's when my real interest in it started. It's been around 13 years or so since then. I've learned a lot. I mean, there's a lot to learn yet.

But I'm happy in what I'm seeing and what I'm learning.

"The decision to go into metallurgy and heat treat adventure was a decision I made alongside my dad. You know, we decided that this was a good business opportunity for both of us."

- Humberto Ramos Fernández

Doug Glenn: I do want to mention that besides being one of Heat Treat Today’s 40 Under 40 recipients, you've also authored a couple of articles with us as well. Obviously you're learning. It's been going well, and you've been contributing, giving back to the industry, which is really good.

Family (05:20)

What did your family think of your decision to go into heat treatment and metallurgy?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: The decision to go into metallurgy and heat treat adventure was a decision I made alongside my dad. You know, we decided that this was a good business opportunity for both of us. Even though he's never been involved in the day-to-day operations, he's been very supportive, and he's the actual president of the board at HT-MX.

We started this business together, and he's been with me all the way. We've had some very dark periods within the last 10 years. Pretty much everything that could happen did happen — a pandemic and multiple industry crises and everything.

He's been very supportive. One of the main reasons we've had some success, and I've been able to lead this company through some hard periods is because of his support and his knowledge. It's a very valuable thing to have, and I'm very grateful for sharing the experience with him and still having him give so much.

HT-MX (07:04)

Doug Glenn: Tell us a little bit about HT-MX. I don't think we've really mentioned it in particular. Did it exist before you started, or did you start it from scratch?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: After I graduated as a mechanical engineer, I got a job at GE Oil & Gas. I worked at this facility where we were manufacturing and oil and gas equipment. I spent a couple of years there. I learned a lot on the engineering side of it.

I got to work in the corporate offices in Houston, TX, for a while, and this led me to realize that there were a lot of supply chain gaps in the Mexican industry. There were heat treaters, but none like the ones we were looking for from the quality side of the requirements.

Being from the engineering side of things, I would visit some of these suppliers and realize that there were opportunities everywhere for more .

While that was happening, there was this pretty cool idea here in Chihuahua: A group of businessmen got together and organized a visit “from Chihuahua to Chihuahua,” trying to understand all the manufacturing happening here. A lot of people didn't really know. Over here, there are four OEMs. There's aerospace OEMs. There's a Ford engine plant. There's a lot of industry happening here. They defined several supply chain gaps, and one of that was heat treatment.

One weekend I was here visiting my parents, and we got to talk about the potential opportunities. We just decided to go for it. We started the company officially in 2010, 2012. We've been operating since.

We have a business partner as well. And I think we made a pretty cool team. And you know, we've survived a lot of things throughout this.

What Is the Most Enjoyable Part of HT-MX? (10:04)

Doug Glenn: What's been the most enjoyable part? What do you really enjoy about it?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: I really enjoy whenever we have and then trying to translate that into an actual service — looking at the potential growth and the equipment requirements and the pyrometry and all that.

I think that's what we take a lot of care for at HT-MX, and I think that's one of the parts I enjoy the most.

Also, you know, just walking through the shop and seeing the furnaces — the floor being clean and organized. That’s just relaxing at some point.

“After lunch I used to drive around some of the old neighborhoods where there's these machine shops, and a single part gear or a shaft, and then go and do the heat treatment. And now we're doing hot isostatic pressing for airplane engine parts.”

Doug Glenn: It's got to be relatively satisfying for you to know that you started from zero.

Humberto Ramos Fernández: When we started, during the first few months, after lunch I used to drive around some of the old neighborhoods where there's these machine shops, and a single part gear or a shaft, and then go and do the heat treatment. And now we're doing hot isostatic pressing for airplane engine parts. So that's a big jump, you know.

It’s very satisfying. But at the end of the day, we still have a lot of challenges and a lot of things to do. So it's never about focusing on what we've already done, but what can be done and what lies ahead.

A bigger business also brings extra worries, you know.

More About HT-MX (11:58)

Doug Glenn: Little business, little problems; big business, big problems. Not a lot of people in the world have built a business from the ground up, so I'm sure it's worth taking some time, and just acknowledging that accomplishment.

So how furnaces? How many HIP units? How many employees do you have?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: Since the pandemic we went through an evolution. We refocused our company and became much more focused on the aerospace industry.

We were running high volume, automotive parts, and oil and gas parts. Since the pandemic and the increase in energy prices and a lot of the inflation issues that we had here in Mexico — especially with the energy costs — we were forced to focus on what we believe is the real volume behind a heat treatment. Which is, in my opinion, the engineering of aspect of it.

We started focusing on these clients where their requirements were higher and where we would be able to better service them with what we had. So, we refocused. We're currently running around eight furnaces and one HIP unit.

We’re expecting to add a couple of furnaces this year and we're in the process of adding a couple of other additional services.

So, we're growing. We kind of moved away from the high volumes work, and we're focusing more on more aerospace industry and work.

Top Industry Resources (13:55)

Doug Glenn: What are some of the resources that you use to help yourself stay well informed?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: I guess the Internet, obviously.

Heat Treat Today is one of the main sources. There are other sites out there where heat treatment is focused on that I follow. And I talked to colleagues. I'm very involved in the aerospace cluster here in Chihuahua, also in Aerospace Federation in Mexico, and with the Chamber Commerce in Chihuahua — also federally in Mexico as well.

Nowadays with the Internet, and all that kind of stuff, there's a lot of information around. The key aspect is to kind of know how to filter the good info from the bad info.

“We started focusing on these clients where their requirements were higher and where we would be able to better service them with what we had. So, we refocused. We're currently running around eight furnaces and one HIP unit.”

- Humberto Ramos Fernández

Rapid Fire Round (14:56)

Doug Glenn: Let me ask you a couple of rapid fire questions, just to kind of get to know you a little bit more as a person, if you don't mind.

Are you a Mac or Apple user, as far as your computer goes? Or are you a PC guy?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: No, I'm an Apple user.

Doug Glenn: Is that right? You have an Apple computer.

Humberto Ramos Fernández: Yeah, I'm actually on an Apple computer right now.

Doug Glenn: Are you more of a digital person? Do you like hard copy print, or digital, or both, or neither?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: I grew up reading physical magazines, and I still really enjoy car magazines and stuff like that. But other than that, books and podcasts and all, it's on digital.

Doug Glenn: So I don't know if this applies so much to you, because you own the company. Do prefer a flexible work schedule or a high paying job? Being the owner of the company, you have neither, so maybe you would take either.

Humberto Ramos Fernández: I'll take whatever I can get. I think that the flexibility is a very, very valuable part of any kind of work. And I try to offer that to the people that we work with. But also, you need to have high pay to retain the good employees and the good engineers. We are trying to balance both.

Doug Glenn: Tell me about your car passion. Are you still doing anything with your car passion here? You like car magazines and stuff like that?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: I have a couple of old cars I like to work on. I work with my brother on restoring as well. I still keep that passion going. It's something that I really enjoy.

Doug Glenn: So you gotta tell us: What's the 40 year old car?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: It's a 1983 BMW 320I.

Humberto’s big interest is working on old cars, especially a 1983 BMW 320I.

Doug Glenn: If you could travel somewhere else that you haven't already been, where would you go, and why?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: I haven’t been to Japan. And I would love to experience the culture. I feel fascinated by their history and their culture and even their food. So that would be one of my first options.

Doug Glenn: What was it about Japan in the past that caught your attention?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: Those kind of cultures that are so radically different from what we experience here in Latin America are very interesting to look at and to visit.

I've been through China. I've been through other Asian countries. And you know I've been through some other countries in Europe. So considering that I've never been, never been there I would definitely choose Japan.

Doug Glenn: What do you do with your free time? Assuming you have any?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: I like to spend my weekends cycling. I do a lot of road cycling as well. Endurance sports, mostly cycling. So recently, I've done a lot of long, long days out there on the bike. I love the weather here, and here in Chihuahua, we're close to some very nice mountains and the canyons are absolutely beautiful places to go and visit on your bike.

Doug Glenn: What’s your favorite app on your phone or movie or magazine?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: My favorite movie I think it would be the Shawshank Redemption.

Doug Glenn: What future plans do you have for your company and life? Obviously, I know you're getting married. So that's one. But company life, generally speaking, what are you looking forward to?

Humberto Ramos Fernández: I'm looking forward to a period of continuous growth in the company, and where we can stabilize the operation and allow me to explore new and bigger opportunities within the heat treatment industry. I think there's a lot to be done here, and I think as a country and as a state, we're coming into a very good period of time.

Personally, I feel optimistic of what we can achieve here, and that still drives me every day to try and improve our company and continue to learn and to establish ourselves as a reliable and valuable heat treater for our clients.

Doug Glenn: That's great, Humberto. It's been a real pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for spending some time with us.

 

About the Expert

Humberto Ramos Fernández is a mechanical engineer with a master’s degree in Science and Technology Commercialization. He has over 14 years of industrial experience and is the founder and director of HT-MX Heat Treat & HIPing, which specializes in Nadcap-certified controlled atmosphere heat treatments for the aerospace, automotive, and oil and gas industries. With clients ranging from OEMs to Tier 3, has ample experience in developing specific, high complexity secondary processes to the highest requirements.

Learn more at ht-mx.com.

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Heat Treat Radio #108: Heat Treat NextGen Humberto Ramos Fernández Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #107: Stop-Off Coatings 101, with Mark Ratliff

/ CARBURIZING TECHNICAL CONTENT, HARDENING TECHNICAL CONTENT, HEAT TREAT RADIO, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT, NITROCARBURIZING TECHNICAL CONTENT

Needing to learn more about the fundamentals and latest developments of stop off coatings? Mark Ratliff, president of AVION Manufacturing Company, Inc., applies his background in chemical engineering to understand and create what makes the best stop-off coatings/paints for carburizing and other heat treat processes. In this episode, Mark and Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, uncover the varieties of coatings, their uses, and the future of coating solutions.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

 

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Chemistry in Coatings: Mark Ratliff’s Start in the Industry (00:22)

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Doug Glenn: I have the really great honor today of talking with Mark Ratliff from AVION Manufacturing. We’re going to do a “painting class” . . . kind of, but not really. Industrial paint — we’re going to talk about stop-off paints and things of that sort.

Mark has been working at AVION, currently located in Medina, Ohio, since 1994. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from the University of Cincinnati. Prior to that — I did not know this about you, Mark — he worked at Shore Metal Treating with your father, huh?

Mark Ratliff: That’s correct, yes.

Doug Glenn: How long was he there?

Mark Ratliff: Well, he started the company. I went working there and was loading baskets of parts since I was about 8 years old. He would pay me $5.00 for a basket, “under the table,” and that was a lot of money back then. I was really rich, at the time!

Mark Ratliff, President, Avion Manufacturing (Source: AVION Manufacturing)

Doug Glenn: That’s pretty cool. It is very interesting to see people’s backgrounds and how they got involved in the industry. A lot of people start young, you know? You may win the record though — 8 years old! The labor board may be calling about your childhood.

Why Use Stop-Off Paints? (01:54)

Let’s talk today. Technically, we want to talk about something that not everybody may know about, and I think you and your company are kind of experts on these things, and that’s stop-off paints. Just from a 30,000-foot view — and you don’t have to go into a lot of detail here, Mark — what are stop-off paints and why do we use them?

Mark Ratliff: Stop-off paints are protective barrier-type coatings. What they do is prevent either carburization or the nitriding process from entering into the steel. They were created probably well over 50 years ago as a replacement for copperplating these parts. In the past, a long time ago, they would copperplate the part that they did not want carburized or nitrided. That’s a time-consuming process as well as being very expensive. The stop-off coatings were developed as an economical alternative to copperplating.

AVION Line of Stop-Offs (Source: AVION Manufacturing)

Doug Glenn: When you say “copperplating,” does that mean it was actual thin sheets of copper metal?

Mark Ratliff: That’s correct, yes.

Doug Glenn: And you actually had to wrap whatever you did not want nitrided or carburized in this copper and that would keep it from nitriding?

Mark Ratliff: That’s correct, yes.

Doug Glenn: Just in case people don’t know — but I would imagine that most people that are listening to this do know — nitriding and carburizing are both surface hardening technologies in which either nitrogen (in the case of nitriding) or carbon (in the case of carburizing) are infused into the surface. That, of course, gives improved wear properties, typically corrosion properties to those areas that receive the infusion of the metal.

Why do people not want the nitrogen or carbon to be infused to certain areas of the part?

Mark Ratliff: When you harden a part, as with carburization or nitriding, a lot of times hardness equates to brittleness. So you may induce certain stress in various parts, in various areas.

Also, if you want to do a post-heat treatment machining on the part, it would be virtually impossible if that part were carburized or nitrided because the surface is so hard that the tool can’t cut through it to do further machining on the part.

“If you want to do a post-heat treatment machining on the part, it would
be virtually impossible if that part were carburized or nitrided because the surface is so hard that the tool can’t cut through it to do further machining on the part.”

— Mark Ratliff, AVION Manufacturing

Doug Glenn: Gotcha.

Can you give a couple examples of parts, and if you can do a description of where on those parts you might apply a stop-off coating?

Mark Ratliff: Well, a lot of times the end user (the customer) is painting an end of a shaft where he’ll heat treat the shaft and make the shaft harder, but he wants to spin a thread on the end of that shaft. That’s a prime example of why you would use a stop-off coating.

A lot of times, the parts are made with the threads already on, but you don’t want those threads to be hardened because, again, hardness equals brittleness, and those threads would crack off after heat treatment. That would be an area where you would apply a stop-off coating.

Physical Properties of Stop-Offs (05:27)

Doug Glenn: Tell us a little bit about the actual physical “properties" of these stop-off coatings. We also call them “stop-off paints.” I’m assuming a lot of times these are just painted on — it’s a liquid format.

Mark Ratliff: They are all supplied in liquid form with the viscosity ranging right around 3500–8500 centipoise (cP). For the carburizing stop-off, we have two different kinds. (This is not new in the industry; most people know the formulations of the stop-offs.)

We have boric acid-based stop-offs; we have two different kinds of that — a waterborne and a solvent borne. The idea behind the boric acid-based stop-offs is that as the boric acid thermally decomposes, it creates a boron oxide glass. This glass is actually the diffusion barrier of the carbon. What’s nice about the boric acid-based stop-offs is that they’re water washable after the heat treatment process; the coating and the residue can get washed off.

Another type of stop-off coating that we have is based on silicate chemistry. A silicate chemistry is basically like putting a glass on the part. It’s more of a ceramic-based coating. It works very, very well, but the drawback of the silicate-based stop-offs is that you have to bead-blast the parts after heat treatment; it does not wash off in water.

Doug Glenn and Mark Ratliff

Doug Glenn: So, you’ve got to brush it off.

Mark Ratliff: You’ve got to brush it off, mechanically, correct.

Doug Glenn: That’s interesting.

When I think of painting something on and then putting it into a furnace, the first thing I think of is that paint is going to get completely obliterated in the furnace. But you just kind of answered that question. Those things will either transform into a glass or a ceramic of some sort after they’ve been in high heat for a while, and that’s what creates the barrier.

Mark Ratliff: That’s correct.

You have the active ingredient in the stop-offs  — you either have the silicate or you have the boric acid. Those are the active ingredients. The vehicle that the paint itself  — be it the water-based latex or the solvent-borne bead — those do, indeed, get charred off. They get burned off, leaving the active ingredient behind.

Doug Glenn: Are you able to use either of those — the water-based or the solvent-based — in vacuum furnaces? Do you have any trouble with off-gassing and things of that sort?

Mark Ratliff: Yes, a little bit. We’ve got to be careful in the vacuum furnace market because you do have the off-gassing. The combination of the vacuum and the heat at once can cause the coating to boil and blister. We do recommend pre-heat treatments when doing a vacuum operation.

Doug Glenn: And the pre-heat just kind of helps it adhere to the part without the blistering, I guess?

Mark Ratliff: That’s correct. And it drives off a lot of the residual water or solvent that might be left in the coating.

Different Chemistry, Different Technology: Plasma Nitriding Stop-Off Coatings (08:32)

Doug Glenn: Okay, good.

Now I understand that there is a new product coming out on the nitriding end of things. Can you tell us a little bit about that and why you’re developing it?

Mark Ratliff: We’ve been making a nitriding stop-off coating since 1989 when we came out with our water-based version. We actually had it patented. We were the first on the market with a water-based nitriding stop-off. This particular stop-off has been used in the industry for 45 years now.

We got called by a current customer asking, “Hey, do you have a plasma or an ion-nitriding stop-off?” At the time, we did not. So, we developed a new plasma — aka, ion-nitriding — stop-off, and that’s a different chemistry, different technology. It is going to be available in the market very soon.

Doug Glenn: Interesting.

I’m curious about this: Are stop-off paints used more in carburizing or nitriding?

Mark Ratliff: By far, carburizing — it’s probably 10 to 1 carburizing to nitriding, for sure.

Doug Glenn: Okay, gotcha.

This episode of Heat Treat Radio is sponsored by AVION.

So, you’ve been doing this for 30 or some years, right?

Mark Ratliff: It will be my 30th anniversary in the month of April.

Doug Glenn: Very nice! Well, congratulations.

Mark Ratliff: I did work for my father prior to that, when he ran AVION for many years before that.

Doug Glenn: Well, congratulations, first off — that’s good. It shows longevity, which is good.

Memorable Moment of Innovation (11:11)

Doug Glenn: Has there been a memorable challenge that you had to deal with, with these stop-off paints?

Mark Ratliff: One thing I’m particularly proud of, Doug, is we always had the water-based carburizing stop-off coating — both varieties — the boric acid-based and the silicate-based. I had a few customers reach out to me and say, “Hey, we’re doing heat treatment for the aerospace industry or for the automotive industry, and they don’t like water-based coatings on their parts,” because you run into corrosion, you run into rust, and so forth and so on. So, these customers asked me to create the solvent-borne, which we did about seven or eight years ago.

One thing I’m particularly proud of is, I got called by the Fiat Chrysler plant in Michigan (they’re going by Stellantis, now), and unbeknownst to them, their current stop-off provider, at the time, changed the formulation. (That was due to the REACH regulations in Europe.) Since they changed the formulation, Stellantis started seeing all these problems. So, they reached out to me and asked, “Do you have an equivalent? We’d like a solvent-borne stop-off.” I was quick to respond, “Oh, by the way, yes, we do. And yes, our product is better,” because even though it’s solvent-borne, we created a nonflammable stop-off coating. In addition to being nonflammable, the solvent that we used in the coating is VOC exempt — VOC meaning volatile organic compounds — which are basically air pollutants that people want to avoid when using these stop-off coatings.

AVION Green Label pail (Source: AVION Manufacturing)

Doug Glenn: Okay, very interesting. I was going to ask you — because I saw on your website — about your green label, which you kind of hit on with the VOC part, but can you tell us a little bit about the green label products that you have and why you’re calling them “green label”?

Mark Ratliff: We called it “green label” a long time ago — that was our original stop-off which kicked off our business 50+ years ago. But I think you’re referring to our eco green label which we created about two years ago.

We’ve been getting a lot of pressure to remove VOCs from our coatings. Clients like John Deere and Caterpillar said, “Hey, we love your coating, but if you could do anything to get the VOCs out of it, we’d really appreciate it.” So, that was one of the biggest goals and one of the biggest accomplishments — to create a coating that didn’t have any of these VOC or HAP (hazardous air pollutants)-type solvents in the coating, and we have successfully done that.

Doug Glenn: That’s good. Especially in the ‘green movement’ that’s going on today, that’s obviously very important.

What coating solution should heat treaters be looking at, in the near future? Is it just VOC stuff, the lack of VOC, or what?

Mark Ratliff: Well, yes, of course. I mean, we’re proud to say that all of our coatings are virtually VOC-free. We are still making the original green label because some customers are not happy to change, so we still offer that. But every single one of our coatings right now have a less than 10 gram/liter VOC threshold, and we’re really quite proud of that.

But, you know, as you’re talking about new coatings coming to the market, we’re coming out with the plasma nitriding stop-off. But we’re also looking into a stop-off for salt bath carburizing. We’ve had a couple people reach out to us, just recently, asking, “Do you have a coating that we can use to paint on the parts that go into a salt bath carburizing operation?”

Doug Glenn: That would be interesting because there is a bit of abrasion going on there, yes?

Mark Ratliff: There is, correct.

Final Questions: Supply Chain, Technical Assistance, and Target Markets (14:51)

Doug Glenn: Now, that’s interesting.

I have two additional questions for you. One has to deal with supply chain issues. Have you guys had any issues with being able to deliver quickly or anything of that sort, ala Covid?

Mark Ratliff: Sure. Right after Covid, we had trouble getting the main ingredient for the carburizing stop-off coating which is boric acid. Currently, I have three suppliers that supply that to me, and there was a point in time where none of them could get the material because the manufacturer of this product was not delivering east of the Mississippi. So, I had to do several days of researching and scrounging around, and I found a distributor in California that said, “Yes, we can get it to you, but you have to buy a whole truckload, which we were very happy to do.”

Doug Glenn: Yes, you take what you can get, at that point.

But no issues now?

Mark Ratliff: No, everything is pretty much back to normal. I mean, gone are the days where you could pick up the phone and get material delivered to you in three days, but most of our raw materials get delivered in under two weeks, and we keep a pretty adequate inventory of all of our raw materials so that we don’t run out of anything.

Doug Glenn: So, you get the raw materials. Do you do your own formulations there? I mean, do you actually do the mixing and all that stuff?

Mark Ratliff: We do. Everything is all done here, in-house, correct.

Doug Glenn: Finally, technical assistance and competency on your guys’ part: Do you have people on your staff — yourself or others — that if a customer calls in with an issue, you can help talk them through it?

“[Look] at the copperplating method: It’s, number one, very expensive, and number two, from what I’ve been told, it’s not very environmentally friendly — you’re working with a lot of hazardous ingredients, hazardous waste."

— Mark Ratliff, AVION Manufacturing

Mark Ratliff: Absolutely. So, I’m the “go to guy” here at AVION. If anyone has any technical questions, I’m the one that’s going to be answering them. And if it’s something where I need to come out to the plant, I’ll get in my car or get on a plane and visit that customer, if the quantity of it dictates that.

Doug Glenn: Yes, sure; it’s got to be a good business opportunity, obviously. But I’m sure you can use the phone to answer questions too.

Mark Ratliff: Yes, most of the time it’s by phone.

Doug Glenn: So, Mark, in the marketplace, is there an ideal client, someone who maybe should be considering stop-off paints that isn’t currently using it? Is there someone out there that you would say, “Hey, you know, if you’re doing this, maybe you ought to think about stop-off paints, if you’re not already doing them.”

Mark Ratliff: Well, I would certainly still target those that are copperplating. Look at the copperplating method: It’s, number one, very expensive, and number two, from what I’ve been told, it’s not very environmentally friendly — you’re working with a lot of hazardous ingredients, hazardous waste. So, those are the types of people that I will continue to target for stop-off coatings.

Doug Glenn: Well, Mark, listen, that’s great. Hopefully, this has been a good primer for people who didn’t know what stop-off paints/coatings were, and hopefully they can get ahold of you if they need something. I appreciate you being with us.

Mark Ratliff: Okay, thank you very much, Doug. I appreciate it myself.

About the Expert

Mark Ratliff started at Avion Manufacturing in 1994 after earning his bachelor’s of science degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Prior to getting his degree, Mark spent many of his summer breaks working for his father at Shore Metal Treating where he gained a good deal of knowledge about the heat treating industry.

Contact the expert at mark@avionmfg.com or www.avionmfg.com

Search Heat Treat Equipment And Service Providers On Heat Treat Buyers Guide.Com

Heat Treat Radio #107: Stop-Off Coatings 101, with Mark Ratliff Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #106: Heat Treat Legend Doug Peters

/ HEAT TREAT RADIO, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT TECH

“Don’t lose sight of who you are . . . .” In an industry where passion to create, help, and discover can become all-consuming, Doug Peters’ drive and dedication to the heat treat industry has not compromised his care to family, employees, and the joys of life. As the founder and CEO of Peters’ Heat Treating, this Heat Treat Legend joins Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, in a special episode.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

HTT · Heat Treat Radio #106: Heat Treat Legend Doug Peters

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Meet Doug Peters (01:05)

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Doug Glenn:  Doug, it’s really good to talk with you. We’ve known each other for many, many years, but it’s really nice to get a chance to sit down with you here on Heat Treat Radio’s Heat Treat Legend — it’s an appropriate title for you. I’m really glad you took the time to talk to us. Welcome to the episode.

Doug Peters:  Thanks, I appreciate it.

Doug Glenn:  The first thing we do in these episodes, Doug, is just kind of give people a sense of you, the person, before heat treat. How did you get into the industry and a little bit of the history of your experience? Why don’t you start with where you are located, as well?

Doug Peters:  We’re located in Meadville and McKean, Pennsylvania; we have two plants. The total square footage in the plants is probably roughly 70,000 square feet.

My history goes clear back to my farm days. Our family farm, which has been in our family since 1885, opened a retail milk store in 1963. My mother had no babysitter, so I had to go to work with her. During that time, I was taught how to prepare a storefront, and by the time I was 12, she had me cashing out the cash register, and reconciling all receipts at the end of the day. When “Mrs. Brown,” who was elderly, pulled up out front, you went out and met her at the car and got her bottles for her, and helped her in and out of the store. A good amount of my business acumen, believe it or not, came from my mother and that experience.

Doug Peters, a true Heat Treat Legend
Source: Peters’ Heat Treating

I graduated from Penn State University with a degree in business but, enroute, tried to be a pharmacist, so I ended up with 40 credits in the sciences. I went into the insurance business because I felt as though I needed some toughening up, people-wise. I ended up being an insurance agent for three years and had one question that I always asked customers and that was: “If I’m a genie and I can grant you one wish, what would it be?” And every tool shop I called on said, “We need a good heat treater.”

I had worked for my wife’s father in a tool and die shop, in the summers, as a saw boy, etc., so I sort of knew what heat treating was. Well, I went and discussed it with my wife’s father, and he gave me the name of a gentleman who had just retired from Talon after 32 years in their heat treating department. I called him on the phone, I paid him under the table, and he taught me the trade. Without him, I wouldn’t be sitting here today.

Likewise, my father-in-law bought us a building and gave it to me one-year rent-free, and my father, who was a railroad engineer, showed up every day after a full shift, and helped me fix the old broken-down equipment that I had bought to start the business.

Then there was Jackie, sitting behind the scenes. She did all the books. She was a full-time schoolteacher. I went three years, to the day, without a paycheck. My first paycheck was $100.

That’s how I got started.

Doug Glenn:  What year did you actually start the heat treat?

Doug Peters:  1979, October of 1979.

Doug Glenn:  October of ’79 you started the heat treat. Wow. And there is great family involvement too, right? Your dad, your father-in-law, Jackie . . .

Doug Peters:  Yes. You know something? You certainly can’t accomplish anything by yourself. Without those guys and Jackie, we would not have been able to do what we did.

Doug Glenn:  That’s great stuff.

Help me with the math. How many years was that ago?

Doug Peters:  In October 2023, it would have been 44 years ago.

Major Accomplishments (04:40)

Doug Glenn:  So, in the 44 years, what are the highlights? Are there one or two, or two or three, major accomplishments that, when you look back, you say, “You know what? This was a major accomplishment or something pretty significant.”

Doug Peters:  I think probably the most satisfying thing to me are the families of the employees that we’ve had over the years. I’ve watched them get married, buy homes, have children, have grandchildren, and we’ve been very lucky to keep a very tenured staff over the years. Being involved with not only the employees but our customers within the community. Being able to contribute and help people as a result of what we do here in the heat treat — it’s really been the most satisfying thing for me.

Doug Glenn:  I don’t want to underemphasize that. I think that’s a classic Doug Peters answer too. You know, you are one of the most “people oriented” people I know, which is great. I told my wife, when we were starting Heat Treat Today: You know what I’m looking forward to, is paying people. I don’t know why I was looking forward to it, but I was. So, I appreciate that perspective.

Does anything jump to your mind as far as actual business accomplishments? Is there anything that happened over the years, like, for example, opening the McKean plant?

Doug Peters:  Yes, I suppose, if you look at those things. To me, those were just normal forces of business to better serve customers.

We started out with four little box furnaces with maximum capacity of 20 pounds. My first employee was my loyal dog. As we moved forward, I was lucky enough to work for a very innovative group of customers. We were on the cusp of tool and die morphing with the advent of computers into enabling (or demanding) us to really do more than traditionally what heat treating had been responsible to do.

For instance, one of the early things we did was we learned how to not control size, but influence size on a particular part and design to eliminate hard finish time on tooling. That was one of the things we did a lot of work in. We did a lot of work in straightening.

Early cryogenics work. I mean, back in 1980 and 1981, I bought a machine that would take gaseous CO₂ and compress it into very pithy dry ice. Then, utilizing ethyl alcohol as a catalyst, I could drive temperatures to -70/-75 degrees. Experimenting with that, we found that we could improve the stability of materials that were being manufactured in the shops, but most of all, improve part life. So, that was the advent of us getting into liquid nitrogen cryogenics, in the very early ‘80s.

From there, we graduated into vacuum furnaces. We have nine vacuum furnaces, presently. In 2006, we bought 20,000-pound nitriders that can do up to 138 inches in length. Then, of course, the specification requirements grew and grew, as we moved forward.

Doug Peters with family. Left to right: Doug Peters, Diana Wilkosz, Jackie Peters, and Andy Wilcosz, with three grandkids interspersed.
Source: Peters’ Heat Treating

At this point in time — and I’ve got to give my son-in-law, Andy, my daughter, Diana, and his staff a lot of credit — Jackie and I had a company that was ISO, and we could work the ASM2750 pyrometry specifications. When Andy and Diana came on board, they took us to Nadcap. Andy just put in a destructive testing laboratory. For instance, we just had our first AS audit, so those capabilities are now online.

And we’ve grown to nearly 80 employees. When you look at the major accomplishments over the years, a lot of the technical-credit goes to the people out on the shop floor who really put their shoulder on the wheel and pushed with us to go through the disciplines that are required to gain those things.

The Metal Treating Institute (09:18)

Doug Glenn:  I’d like you to address two other questions on accomplishments, if you don’t mind, Doug. You and I have had a long history in the Metal Treating Institute. I’d just like you to have a comment about your activity there, including the fact that you were a president. Then, also, would you be comfortable commenting on Laser Hard?

Doug Peters:  Sure!

As far as MTI, our company would not be successful without MTI — or as successful as it is. We’ll give Jackie the credit.

In 1984, I bought a fluidized bed from Wally Bamford. As we sat at dinner, after we had signed the purchase orders that evening, Wally shoved an application for MTI under my nose, and he said, “You’ve got to join this organization.” I asked him what it was about, and he told me, so Jackie and I joined. But we didn’t do anything for four years, except look at the sales reports and everything else.

Well, my wife signed us up for our very first meeting in 1989. Once we got there, I went, “Oh my goodness, have I been missing out on how to grow the company?” It was at that meeting that I met Chet Walthall and Roger Keeran, who ended up being wonderful mentors and friends of mine. I treasure those guys so much.

The other fellow that I met through that journey was Jack Ross who owned Ironbound. Jack would allow you to come into his plant and he’d share anything, as long as you were an MTI member — that was his only requirement.

Lance Miller was our executive secretary, at that point. My first involvement at MTI was getting a call from Chet Walthall congratulating me because I was on his education committee. Then, with forward planning — which is now strategic planning — I called Lance and asked if I could go to the meetings being held in Pittsburgh. I was not on the committee but my contention to him was, as a forty-something, I really thought that somebody younger should be on the committee that was planning the future in the institute. So, that’s my involvement, and it just mushroomed from there.

I was the millennial president in 1999 and 2000. I have been on numerous committees, chaired the Education Foundation’s institution with Norm Graves; Norm was the treasurer.

Well, yes, of course, my wife, Jackie, who was our president in in 2015. It was my pleasure to carry her briefcase that year and watch her. Her tenure, at the board level and through the chairs, was longer than mine. She served on numerous committees and she’s received a few awards, and she’s so deserving.

Doug Peters, Founder & CEO, Peters’ Heat Treating, Inc.

Doug Glenn:  In fact, if I may interrupt, you were one of the founders of that Educational Foundation, if I’m correct.

Doug Peters:  That is correct. And, you know, there were other people on our committee too, but to be able to see what the education foundation has grown to and how it will support the industry moving forward, I am very pleased to have been a part of that.

Doug Glenn:  And we’ve got to make another note here, since we mentioned Wally Bamford: It wasn’t long ago that Wally made a very significant contribution to that foundation.

Doug Peters:  Well, you’re doggone right.

Our initial bogey was a quarter of a million dollars. We weren’t going to take a nickel out until we got to $250,000. We pushed it over $250,000 and that’s when I stepped aside and we had different folks take chairs. Then we pushed it to $450,000, and now we’re giving scholarships. As a matter of fact, we had a recipient, here at the heat treat, to the Founders Scholarship. Then, of course, Wally, at our 90th anniversary, gave us a million dollars.

Doug Glenn:  Canadian!

Doug Peters:  Canadian, yes, yes! And I’m going to call Wally to make sure that he listens to this podcast, Doug.

Doug Glenn:  It was so typical Wally Bamford, right? He’s up front, he’s talking, and he says, “I’d like to donate a million dollars,” and everybody is oohing and aahing, and he leans in and says, “Canadian” in a deep voice, into the mic. It was classic. Wally needs a lot of credit there.

One other question, before we get off of MTI. Have any other people in your family been the president of MTI that you’d like to talk about?

Doug Peters:  Well, yes, of course, my wife, Jackie, who was our president in in 2015. It was my pleasure to carry her briefcase that year and watch her. Her tenure, at the board level and through the chairs, was longer than mine. She served on numerous committees and she’s received a few awards, and she’s so deserving.

Doug Glenn:  We share quite a bit in common, right? First off, we have the same names: Doug and Doug. We also have wonderful wives and, if you’re like me, people in MTI can tolerate you, but they really like your wife. That’s the way it works on my side.

Doug Peters:  Absolutely. Everybody says “hi” to her before they say “hi” to me.

Doug Glenn:  Exactly. We both married well!

So, as far as MTI, thank you for commenting on that. I just felt that was important. That’s one of the reasons why I think both you and Jackie really are kind of heat treat legends. You’ve been very active in a lot of different things, MTI especially.

Laser Hard (14:12)

Tell us briefly about Laser Hard.

Doug Peters:  Laser Hard has been a joint family venture. Good friends of ours (and customers), the Learn family has been doing laser welding and cladding for a good number of years and are principals in Alpha Laser in North America. The patriarch, Blair Learn, gave me a call and said, “I want to show you something.” So, I went down and looked at it and, when all was said and done, we decided to partner. He knew lasers and I knew heat treating and we felt as though there was a real need.

The things that we’ve done with Laser Hard, in solving issues that cannot be solved in traditional heat treating, do not cease to amaze me on a daily basis. The type of customers that we’re attracting, including large toolmakers (Tesla, Ford) there are all kinds of people that have come and worked with us on applications that we have had an opportunity to pioneer, literally.

It’s just been a wonderful partnership. I can’t say enough good things about Phoenix Laser, Inc.; that is the formal name of our partner’s company, and the Learn and Peters connection continues to thrive.

Doug Glenn:  That’s great, that’s great. If anyone wants additional information on Laser Hard or Phoenix Laser, Inc., we can certainly get in touch with them.

I want to make sure people know a couple of names we’ve thrown out there, just for reference. Obviously, you’ve mentioned Jackie is your wife, and you’ve also mentioned Andy and Diana Wilkosz. Diana, of course, is your daughter, and Andy is now the plant manager/president.

Doug Peters:  He is the president of the company.

Doug Glenn:  Very good. A little kudos out again, back to the MTI relationship. Andy did a good bit of interning, I think, down at Texas Heat Treating, Inc. with Buster Crossley, if I remember correctly.

Doug Peters:  That is correct. He worked out at Buster’s plant for three years before he came up.

Doug Glenn:  Not that my opinion counts, but both Diana and Andy seem to be very accomplished folks; they represent Peters well in the industry.

Influential People (16:30)

You had mentioned, Doug, a couple of names that had a major influence or that were helpful to you, people that you want to maybe give some credit to. You mentioned about the guy at Talon. Is there anybody else, as you look back on your career, that has had a significant impact on you and helped you along the way?

Doug Peters:  There have been so many people, I almost feel remiss in naming only a few names, in case I forget somebody. Obviously, Mr. Weller Gregg, who was that Talon guy (who was the head of heat treating), that gave me the start.

The young Doug Peters
Source: Peters’ Heat Treating

My two dads. And my two moms. Jackie’s mom taught me one of the most valuable lessons in business that I tell people about and that I carry forward. Every Thursday, Jackie’s mom would watch our children, when they were young, so Jackie could come to the shop and do payroll. Then she started having us up for dinner after work.

I was up there one evening and she sensed that I was a little troubled with something, and she said, “You have something on your mind, today,” and I said, “Yeah, I have a few things going on at work,” and she said, “Well, might I suggest something? I have a question: Can you do anything about them, right now?” and I said, “Well, no,” and she said, “Well, I suggest that you worry about them when you can do something about them.”

It was absolutely the best piece of advice I ever got because I learned how to put some of those things on a shelf and deal with them when I could deal with them. I think it saved me a lot of grief and a lot of stress, over the years.

Obviously, Chet and Roger. They gave me the confidence to think that I was good enough to do this. Jim Balk, up at Hansen/Balk, was a real mentor, and he gave me the confidence that I was heading in the right direction, and we shared many of the same philosophies about how you take care of customers.

I’ll talk about Lance Miller who really put the love of the industry inside of me; I can’t say enough about Lance.

And then you look down through that long list of the notables in the industry: A shoutout to Roger Jones who’s going through a battle, right now, with cancer. Roger, we love you and we hope that everything comes through for you. John Hubbard, who’s a really good friend of mine and who was an industry giant with his career and his seat at Bodycote. Like I said, Jack Ross, and just the different people, Doug, that I’ve met over the years who were just phenomenal people.

MTI, right now, I believe, is in very capable hands with Tom Morrison and his staff. I feel very good to still be part of MTI.

Life Lessons (19:15)

Doug Glenn:  Any lessons that you’ve learned, like the one that your mother-in-law gave you, which I think is a valuable one: “Don’t worry about it until you can do something about it.” Is there anything else that you’ve learned, as a “senior” in the industry, that you think is worth discussing?

Yes, I did just call you a senior!

Doug Peters:  My parents stuffed a lesson right inside of me: be a finisher. Put all the tools away where you found them.

One of things from being in business that I can tell you is very valuable — when your name is on the sign, you accept all blame. I’ve never, in 44 years, ever thrown one of my employees under the bus to a customer. I accept the blame. Because, when something goes wrong in this building, it is something that I take responsibility for. You do not ever throw somebody under the bus; you go back and you work with them to perhaps correct the behavior, the execution, or something.

But that one’s been really important to me because, you know, you do not tear down a person’s dignity, as you work with them, whether it’s a customer or one of the folks that you work with inside of your building. So, that one has been very, very important to me.

Doug Glenn:  As you’ve worked, over the years, I’m sure the way you started working, back when you were a young man and as you’ve progressed up through, were there any disciplines you developed that really helped make you either a better person or a better businessman, or anything of that sort — anything that maybe even you continue, to this day, in disciplines?

Doug Peters:  Number one is being up really early in the mornings, when you have personal time. Because a lot of people complain that they don’t have personal time. They lose themselves in their vocation. My father was a big contributor to that. Dad used to go to work at 7:00 in the morning. He was a railroad engineer so he’d get up at like 4:30/4:45am. I said to him one day, “Dad, why do you do that?” And he looked at me and he grinned and he said, “Because you’re not!” The point was that that was his time.

“I think you have to make family time. I don’t care how busy you think you are; you have to be able to create that balance, and you have to force that balance to happen.”

Doug Peters, Founder & CEO, Peters’ Heat Treating

And I think you have to make family time. I don’t care how busy you think you are; you have to be able to create that balance, and you have to force that balance to happen. For instance, I was home every night by 5:30pm: I had dinner with my children, I played with them, we worked on homework, and when they were young, I’d help bathe them. And if I needed to go back to work, I would kiss Jackie and go back out the door after the kids were snugged in their beds.

Jackie, on the other hand, used to bring the kids to the shop. In the early days, I’d be working weekends, and she’d pack up a whole dinner and she’d come over and she’d bring the dog and the picnic table and be outside and we’d have a family dinner together. But I think, when we were together, we never really tried to not talk business because we always had our family first, business second, so that made that formula easy.

The only goal that we ever had for the company, Doug, was to be with our children when we wanted to be with them. When Diana graduated from college, I looked at Jackie and asked, “What’s the goal now?” and she said, “To be with our children when we want to be with them.” At that point, that’s been the only major goal that Jackie and I have ever had with Peters’ Heat Treating.

Learning Through Difficulties (22:37)

Doug Glenn:  That’s great.

Well, you’ve addressed the other question I was going to ask you and that was about work/life balance.

Jackie and Doug Peters receiving the Winslow Award
Source: Peters’ Heat Treating

As you know, 40 some years, not every day is sunshine and roses — sometimes there can be difficult times. Can you recall a difficult time and — if you’re comfortable talking about it — what was it and what did you learn from it?

Doug Peters:  Well, we’ve had two fires, one in each plant. Each fire was not a result of anything that was a delinquency on our part. But having to take each one of those buildings and sift through the rubble and to rebuild each one of them certainly was, I think, a character tester.

Losing key employees at the wrong time. All it did was reinforce why you do contingency planning, why you cross train, etc.

The one thing Jackie always said was it was wonderful being married to somebody that liked what he did for a living because I seldom came home, downtrodden. There were a lot of nights, in the early days of building the company, I’d be crawling into bed at 10:30pm when the phone would ring and 3rd shift would be calling off when we only had two guys up there, and I’d pull my pants back on and go back to work and then stay the whole next day. I did that numerous times as we built this company.

Those, somebody might say are “trials and tribulations,” but to me, it was just part of the job. It’s what I signed up to do and there’ll be no whining. You got your pants on, you went to work, and you were fortunate that you had a job to go to.

Career Highlights and Advice to the Next Generation (24:17)

Doug Glenn:  Obviously, there were some valleys there, like the fires and things of that sort. How about the highlight? If you could pick one thing that was the highlight of your career, what would it be?

Doug Peters:  There were a number of highlights: Watching the kids go through school and be successful in their respective careers, watching my wife be president of MTI in 2015 was a super, super highlight for me, and being fortunate to be asked to serve in the institute and to win the Heritage Award was something that was very special to me.

Here, in Meadville, we have what’s called the Winslow Award. It was started by Dr. Harry Winslow many, many years ago to go to the person that contributes the most to making sure that the Meadville economy is sound. I was the proud recipient of that in 2022. The list of names in that award, locally, is just amazing, too.

To not have made a bunch of enemies is something. You know, you have those instances where you’re in a difficult time — a job that’s gone bad or whatever. I’m very proud to say that, most of the time, when I see somebody that I haven’t seen in a while, I’m glad to see them and I think they’re glad to see me.

Doug Glenn:  Last question for you, then: You and I both are getting up there as being “seniors” in the industry. Is there any piece of advice you would give to younger people?

Doug Peters:  I think, first and foremost, don’t lose sight of who you are. I’ll go back to my father again. Dad looked at me one time and said, “Don’t become what your job is.” This all stemmed from him being a really beautiful woodworker. He could do woodworking that was gorgeous, and I asked him one time, “Why don’t you do this for a career?” and he said, “Well, it would be a job then!” And, in the course of that conversation, he looked at me and he said, “Don’t become what your job is. Be a great person that enjoys the job you chose.” I always tried to make sure that that’s who I was because I chose this vocation because I love to serve people, not because I loved to heat treat. It just so happened that heat treating was the vehicle that fulfilled my dream of serving people.

Doug Peters, Founder & CEO, Peters’ Heat Treating. Source: Peters’ Heat Treating

Dad was spot-on. Because, you know, when you retire, how many people do you see that are completely lost after they’ve walked out of their place of employment and they don’t know who they are? For me, that’s not been the case. I’ve been completely fulfilled. It was time. I’m happy to be on to the next stage in my life.

So, don’t become what your job is, is the first piece of advice I’m going to give these folks. Secondly, “Eat the frog.” Do the most unpleasant thing that you have to do every day, first, because your day is only going to get better. An MTI seminar that I went to gave me that piece of advice.

Last, but not least, take the three most important things you have to do tomorrow and write them down on a notebook and put them right in front of your computer at your desk at work so the next day when you walk in, there are only three things that are clouding your mind instead of list with 50 things. But if the day gets worse, turn the page, and write one down and take the other two off the list. It will help you focus and it will keep you moving forward.

Doug Glenn:  That’s really good advice.

You know, you were talking about not becoming your job, which reminded me of a picture I saw of you, years ago, sitting behind a drum set. Tell us about that, just a little bit.

Doug Peters:  I started playing the drums when I was in 8th grade. My father was a drummer, and he was a USO drummer. He was a sergeant in the Transport Corp, during World War II, in the European theater, and dad taught me how to play the drums. I did take some lessons, for a short time, but not as long as I would’ve liked to have.

Then, I had a rock band, and I’ve continued to play, over the years, and I play with artists on records. I’ve played, pretty much, my whole life, and I’ve enjoyed it.

Doug Glenn:  That’s the human side and that’s great.

Doug, thanks very much. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to visit with us.

Doug Peters:  Well, thank you, Doug. It’s always a pleasure.

About the Expert

Doug Peters with his wife, Jackie (Kuhn) Peters, founded Peters’ Heat Treating company in 1979. Over his career, Peters has served on numerous community service and industry trade association boards. He is past president of the NW Chapter National Tooling and Machining Association as well as the millennial president of the Metal Treating Institute.

Contact www.petersheattreat.com

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