HEAT TREAT RADIO

Heat Treat Radio #17: Heat Treat Megatrends with Gary Doyon

Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio, a periodic podcast where Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, discusses cutting-edge topics with industry-leading personalities. Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript. To see a complete list of other Heat Treat Radio episodes, click here.


Audio: Heat Treat Radio: Heat Treat Megatrends with Gary Doyon

In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews Gary Doyon, president and CEO of the Inductotherm Group, based in Rancocas, New Jersey on megatrends in heat treating. Inductotherm Group develops and manufactures advanced technologies, products, and systems for the heat-driven transformation of metals and specialty materials, providing localized manufacturing, engineering, service, and support in every region of the world through 40 full-service companies providing 50 individual product lines organized into 10 global brands. In addition, Doug asks Gary talk about a broad range of heat-treat related topics, including design change, electric vehicles, recycling materials, Brexit, immigration’s impact on U.S. manufacturing, a younger workforce, USMCA, and cybersecurity.

Click the play button below to listen.


Transcript: Heat Treat Radio: Heat Treat Megatrends with Gary Doyon

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Extra support for this episode of Heat Treat Radio is provided by the Industrial Heating Equipment Association, IHEA, where leading companies in the thermal processing industry meet to discuss ways of advancing the industry. IHEA, on the web at www.ihea.org.

THERMPROCESS, the largest heat treating trade show in the world is just around the corner, as of the original airing of this Heat Treat Radio episode in mid-June 2019, and there is no better way to prepare for that event than to spend some time talking with someone in the heat treat industry who has a uniquely global perspective.

Hi, and thank you for joining us. I’m your Heat Treat Radio host and publisher of Heat Treat Today, Doug Glenn, and the gentleman we are talking to today has been in the industry for over 30 years and is CEO of over thirty metals-related companies around the globe, many involved directly in the North American heat treat market. You’d recognize many of the company names. Take, for example, Inductoheat, Radyne, Thermatool, Banyard, as well as Consarc and PVT. Today we’ll talk about international heat treating megatrends with our guest, Gary Doyon, president and CEO of the Inductotherm Group.

Before we get to Gary, let me remind you that you can keep current with all things heat treating by visiting Heat Treat Today’s website: www.heattreattoday.com or by receiving one of our many E-newsletters. You can subscribe by visiting our website. And, if you’d like more information on THERMPROCESS, that huge heat treat show I mentioned above, jump on your browser and go to www.thermprocess-online.com. You can also Google “Heat Treat Radio THERMPROCESS” and be taken directly to a previous episode of Heat Treat Radio where we interviewed Eva Rowe from Thermprocess.

DG: On today’s episode, in anticipation of THERMPROCESS, which is being held in Dusseldorf, Germany, on June 25–29, we’re going to talk with Gary Doyon, one of the most qualified individuals in the heat treat industry to discuss international megatrends. Our conversation is fast-paced and wide-ranging, covering topics as diverse as cybersecurity, immigration, the impact of electric vehicles on the heat treat supply train, and Brexit.

First, let’s learn a bit more about the man, Gary Doyon.

GD:  My name is Gary Doyon. I’ve been with Inductotherm Group for 33 years. I started off in sales in Connecticut at a company called Thermatool and progressed up through operations. I took over a Thermatool group which was a number of companies and then eventually got into the management of the Inductotherm group which is some 40 companies around the world, and today my title is president and CEO of that group.

Global Growth of Heat Treat Industry

DG:  First question for Gary: Geographically, where do you anticipate higher than average and lower than average growth in the heat treat world over the next 5 to 10 years?

GD:  Geographically, I think the above average is going to be seen in the next 5 to 10 years in North America for sure, Asia—India especially, and Brazil if it can get its political identity issues under its belt. Not above average are Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

DG:  In the above average group, you said, “especially India.” Why is that?

GD:  India right now is a 6% GDP growth, year-on-year, and it’s going to grow up from there. If you visit India, you’ll see the infrastructure is poor and they are investing a lot in it. They are making a ton of cars. They are getting into the possibility of aerospace manufacturing of parts, land-based turbines, and things of that nature. They want to become more self-sufficient on all the infrastructure needs which means metal production of the utmost volume, and their foundry and steel-making businesses are rising incredibly fast.

Technology Trends in Heat Treating

DG:  Let’s move from geography to technology. Where do you see above-average activity? And where below average activity?

GD:  Technically, powder metallurgy and 3D printing probably have the largest potential impact on thermal processors from a disruption standpoint. The composition of the steels and metals used in 3D or powders affect the heat treating practices because what’s good for part making may not be good for heat treating. Today the regular methods of part making like forging or casting are cheaper in volume, but they are not as flexible in the design change of parts. I see that the pace of design change is slowing down, especially in automotive, because the automotive producers seem to be actually practicing standardization in power train and frame and engine programs, so this may mean that the flexibility of 3D powders is less valuable while volume producing by traditional methods will stay more economical. We’ll have to see what happens about that.

DG:  Interesting. You say the pace of design change is slowing down, especially in the automotive industry?

GD:  I believe that, yes. I believe that the carmakers internationally have decided to standardize and do less design changes which means it will increase the volume of parts per their vehicle spectrum. That’s good for thermal processors today because they may be able to use the same processes they have in place for years to come.

Environmental Concerns

DG:  How about the evolution of electric vehicles?

GD:  The evolution of electric vehicles I think will cause a shift in the types of metal parts that are heat treated. You will go to much more gears versus crankshafts, camshafts, and things like that. But it seems to me that the EV progress is going to be dictated more by the two larger issues. One is the ability to produce better battery technology for longer trips and for faster charges, and what comes with that is the faster you charge, the larger the electrical peak load is needed. The whole issue of the electrical grid sizing for peak load or how to charge for the higher demand charge that comes with rapid charging—this all remains to be seen. If they can’t get over those subjects, then I think EV evolution is going to be stagnated. Then there is the big one which is recycling of the batteries. As far as thermal processors getting into gear heat treating, etc, that may or may not elevate as fast as they may think, depending on these issues, in my opinion.

I think another technical/situational event that is happening is the worries of legislation on climate change. I think it may have an impact on the thermal processors, especially the gas-fired or the flame-type systems people. Despite the science that they’ve put in for minimizing any sort of output from those kinds of processes, perception is reality on furnaces. So, again, on that we will see what happens.

The other issue I think we should bring up is composites. I think composites will always have a place, but the recycling ability of these also flies in the face of climate change worries. The ability to recycle metals easily, in my opinion, will always be a natural positive for metals, which then affects metal processors.

DG:  It sounds like environmental concerns will act more as a restraint than a stimulant on the growth of electric vehicles in the next decade, due primarily to the recyclability issue?

GD:  I believe so. I think the excitement about getting into electric vehicles and composites causes a lot of upfront research and development, but then it hits into the face of the reality of the electrical grid, environmental considerations—the realities of living in America especially, where no one wants more power lines in their backyard, etc. In a lot of ways, it’s the same as renewable energies and how that stagnated a bit when people don’t want to have windmills in their backyard. I think these are real situations that could cause stagnation of these technologies for the next 5 or 10 years.

DG:  Beyond 5 to 10 years, do you see us ultimately moving to electric vehicles?

GD:  Yes, it’s inevitable. I think the race is going to be between creating good hydrogen or another fuel type of engine, and if they can’t do that economically, they’ll have to go to electric vehicles, no question.

Growth in North America Heat Treat Industry

DG:  Let’s focus in on North America for a moment. Where do you see North America excelling throughout the next decade or two?

GD:  If you want to talk about America, I think the real growth is in aerospace. The design changes in aerospace, especially in the jet engine, the turbines, the gearing components, and how these metals are made to get the weight out and how they’re heat treated to give the fatigue strength and the strength that it wants for that application. I think automotive trends will still likely be led by American companies, both the traditional companies and others like Tesla and Rivian. I think that’s another important consideration going forward. As far as America goes, leadership, medical devices, medical procedures using electron beam laser therapies, induction—these are technologies used by heat treat processors. These will be led by Americans and this is a new business for some of these companies to get into at the end of the day. I believe firmly that manufacturing will keep returning to the U.S. as the trend towards these fair trade raises the want to invest in America in manufacturing. The renewed interest in good jobs that you hear from politicians also bodes well for America’s growth.

DG:  Which driver do you think is more important for America’s growth: low energy costs or the political trade climate?

GD:  I think the political trade climate is absolutely the most important thing. If you take China, for instance. I look at the China trade war as not really a war, but it’s finally heightened public discussion on what should have always been happening and that a continued robust negotiation between the U.S. and China on specific trade items should have been happening and is happening now. I think the U.S. is putting their foot down harder than we have before. Once that settles down, I think a better trade situation benefiting both countries can become a reality.


As we continue below, we’ll talk about some really interesting topics such as Industry 4.0 and the big warning that Gary has for companies getting involved, as well as cybersecurity and working with the younger generation. But first, a special thanks goes out to Anne Goyer and all of the good people over at the Industrial Heating Equipment Association (IHEA) for their support of Heat Treat Radio. In case you didn’t know it, IHEA provides top caliber training for many of your heat treating needs. In fact, on September 24th and 25th, IHEA is bringing three of their most popular training courses to the home of the rock and roll hall of fame, Cleveland, Ohio. Whether it’s their combustion seminar, their safety standard seminar or their process heating seminar, someone on your heat treating team will find one or more of these seminars valuable. You can find out more about these seminars by visiting IHEA’s website at www.ihea.org.


DG:  I next asked Gary about how the heat treat business world has changed over the past decade. Here’s what he had to say:

A Decade of Changes in Heat Treating

GD:  One, I think customers have far less technical staff than they had 10 years ago and that pushes companies like ours to offer much more services and technical support and maintenance throughout the life of the machinery that we sell.

I think that a huge issue is the legal issues forcing companies to pay more attention to terms and conditions and safety and contractual issues. I think that has become much more prominent over what, when I was younger, the handshake type climate of 20 years ago.

Industry 4.0—and Over-Digitization?

I think that the push towards Industry 4.0 has companies approaching us wanting a lot more automation connectivity while simultaneously, they want to increase the digitization of data. This trend towards smart factories could provide a rush to provide a lot of data without understanding if it is productive or not, and that could lead to a very costly system and mass amounts of nonproductive data. This happened in the early days of ERP and ISO implementation, and I see it happening again.

DG:  Perhaps we are swinging too far with data collection and collecting data just because we can.

GD:  Yes, usually what happens, I think, is that companies that are not used to data collection will hire people that are used to data collection and so they won’t be as concerned about getting the key points of their process to make sure the process is robust, but they want to just capture every piece of data. That is a very costly thing for people to both implement on the machinery and implement on their factory floor. I think people should measure twice and cut once, and you should really think hard about what your goals are before you lay out that smart factory.

The Industry 4.0 was driven by the Germans back in the mid-2000s, and in a lot of ways, it was driven to give a competitive edge to European companies over low-cost countries like China or India. The thought there was that their advantage in science and computerization would give them the ability to have a factory with far fewer people or more knowledge. It’s been a top-down approach pushing different manufacturers into the Industry 4.0 so they can get this production data. I would believe that heat treaters would be very concerned about people coming in and telling them they need 30 data points on every part that they make when only 15 are relevant to the quality of that part. I think that is tantamount in what the heat treaters need to push back on, which is information that is useful and productive versus information for just information sake.

They will say to us, “Okay, on this crankshaft, we need these 40 data points,” and they will force people to do that. Then we will say, “In order to do that, we have to destructively cut every fifth piece, we have to do this, we have to do that.” And then they will say, “No, no no, this is what our R&D people want, so you have to do this.” Then we’ll say, “OK. This is the cost to do this. What do you want for maintenance?” And they will say, “Well, for maintenance, we don’t want to have anybody that knows about the machine, so we want you to prepackage all of the power supply in three boxes so if there is a problem with part of the power supply, you’ll take this part out and just slip a new part in—without having maintenance intelligence.” And we will say to them, “Well, okay, we get that, so instead of a $500 capacitor, now you give us 30K to redo the inside of the power supply.” That’s where their engineering and production people want to push you. Then you get with purchasing and the purchasing person says, “What are you talking about? We aren’t doing any of that. We want the lowest cost equipment and a $500 capacitor; we don’t want to have ‘the works in the drawer.’”

I believe we are at this cross point. In Germany, because they invented Industry 4.0, they put a lot more muscle into this, and I think that’s why some of their competitive disadvantage is happening. If you come into America, they are asking for it, but they’re not killing you yet, but they’re going to.

Remember when ISO came in and everybody made the same mistake with ISO. They let the ISO auditors tell them that they needed to document every little thing they did in their entire company, and most people’s companies got brought to a standstill. Over time, they developed it down to just the most important things you needed for processes, and then your plant ran better. That is where we are right now in some of this Industry 4.0. I don’t want to sound too negative because it has a lot of positives to it, but the implementation of it will make it or break it, for sure.

DG:  But that is the way new technologies are adopted. It’s like when a child gets a new toy for Christmas, the first several days they spend 100% of their time with it because it is shiny and new, but later on they either forget about it completely or strike a more sensible balance of when to play with that new toy.

GD:  That is 100% correct. But if you’re setting up a $100 million factory, and you get it wrong, that’s a big problem.

Lower Costs and Customer Support

DG:  Let’s jump back to the question about how the heat treat business world has changed over the past decade. You mentioned customers have far less technical expertise. You mentioned the more litigious environment that we live in and the importance of those terms and conditions. And then the demand for data and the emergence of Industry 4.0 and perhaps our somewhat mindless collecting of data. Does anything else jump to mind?

GD:  I think the difference between companies that are so-called full-service companies and ones that aren’t is a huge issue for heat treaters to be selecting equipment from. One of the negative trends has been a huge separation between engineering and production departments and purchasing departments, especially in the larger companies. That puts more emphasis on price than the real needs of what that company looked for, and in the short-term, that can favor the price-leading suppliers—on the short run, the people that give it a lower price. But in the longer run, these customers need support. They just don’t have the people in there, and it cannot serve them well if they don’t work with the right company.

Geopolitics and Trade

DG:  Let me throw out some geopolitical names and tell us what pops to mind. Brexit—

GD:  I don’t think Brexit has very much effect. It certainly is not going to affect the way the media says, because at the end of the day, I believe European Union regulations have added costs and dissuaded innovation in Europe, therefore I believe Brexit is good for the British because it possibly leads to more pressure for other people to leave the union, and they’re going to open up to have less regulation and cost. It is very costly to do business in Europe.

DG:  China. Any additional thoughts on China?

GD:  I think China is a huge trading partner for us today, but I think it’s going to be a much more equitable one in the future, once we get over this short-term tension between them and once we get our “win-win” attitudes in line with each other, I think it’s going to be a phenomenal trading partner going forward.

DG:  North Korea.

GD:  I don’t think they have any effect on us today economically. It could become a new market in the future, but today they have no effect on us economically whatsoever.

DG:  How about Venezuela?

GD:  When I was younger, Venezuela was a serious energy player. We sold a lot of equipment in Venezuela and Venezuela was obviously one of the major energy exporters in the world, so reviving their economy and becoming a market, if they can do that, I think would be good for especially the South American hemisphere area. But, unless they get their political stances straight, they’re just going to remain where they are.

DG:  Brazil?

GD:  Brazil sort of lost its way in the last couple of years from a manufacturing standpoint and a socialist trend in Brazil took away a lot of the desire to invest in Brazil. They had lots of union issues, a tremendous amount of union issues, especially with things like pensions and extra costs like that. And then secondarily, their stance on imports and how they stop other countries from exporting to Brazil has turned off a lot of people from investing in Brazil. The new president there says he’s going to bring back fair trade, and if he does that, I think Brazil could become a world player again.

Immigration, Labor, and Retaining Younger Employees

DG:  Let’s talk for a minute about U.S. immigration and how it’s impacting your business and the heat treating economy generally.

GD:  U.S. immigration is mostly a southern border issue, in my opinion, and it is mostly an issue with people from South America, not really people from Mexico. I think this has to be worked out by Congress, and Congress is just being silly in the view that it isn’t an issue. It’s been an issue for 40 years, and they have no answers for it. I think we have to have a system in place, as we have for years and years and years, and outside of asylum, anybody that wants to come in should enter through this system.

DG:  How about the U.S. labor market for you? And what are you hearing from your customers regarding their ability to find qualified workers?

GD:  For my customers, I hear that all the time. I have been with this company for 33 years and many of the people that are in our group have more years than I do. I think we have 3200 in our group and I would say half of those employees have over 12 or 15 years with the company. One way we’ve been able to hang onto people is, by having 40 companies globally, we give the people the opportunity to travel to these companies or relocate to another area of the U.S. or to another part of the world. I think if you can keep the younger people challenged, give them this ability to try another area of their life, pay them fairly, and most importantly, if you can show them a future through a well-developed succession planning effort so that they think they have a chance to get promoted in the future, I think they’ll stay with you for a long time.

United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)

DG:  Let’s talk about two more topics. The new North America trade agreement—USMCA—and then cybersecurity. What are your thoughts on USMCA?

GD:  I think the USMCA, the way I understand the legislation, is that a big part of it is raising wages in the lower cost areas of Mexico, and I think evening the wages out will even out the flow of trade between the three countries versus just flowing to the lowest cost country because of the low wages. Personally, I think that wage increase is a good thing. Henry Ford proved that out a long time ago when he gave his workers unheard of type wages. I think that at the end of the day, it will create a better middle class and that feeds into the economy like a gas pedal and becomes self-sustaining, even if inflation rises a few percentage points. I think people shouldn’t buy the media hype about things like robots doing away with a lot of jobs in the United States. To me, all this talk stems from academics and politicians who haven’t spent much time of their life in the business. We have a situation right now where our unemployment is below 4%, so that means that most people that want to work are working. How do you grow that economy? I think you grow that economy by paying people more money and then they can use that money to buy what they want and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Cybersecurity

DG:  Last question: Cybersecurity—What are you seeing?

GD:  We’ve seen a tremendous increase in email intrusions with people tricking our customers into remitting payments to scammed accounts. This is especially bad because it strains our relationships with our customers. At the end of the day, there is no clear person to blame: it is this unknown person on the internet. As an example, we had a customer recently that gave us a $900,000 down payment, and he remitted it to a bank account that he had received on a scammed email where they had taken our invoice that we had put into the email, and they had changed it to their bank number, and so the $900,000 was put into that scammer’s bank account, and they withdrew about $120,000 of it before the proper government officials could shut it down. We have got that back now and there have been some arrests made, but I can think of 20 or 30 of these situations happening just in the last 5 or 6 months.

DG:  Have you changed the way you do business because of it?

GD:  Yes, what we’ve done is we’ve gone out to try to tell our customers that we will no longer put any sort of remittance information in email form anymore. We will only do that in an encoded or encrypted manner which we will send directly to their accounts payable people. We will also duplicate a message to them of what the bank they should be using is, not the account number and what have you, and so when things line up correctly, they should remit the payment. Otherwise, they should treat everyone that has some skeptical information, and not pay us. We’d rather not get paid than give it to a scammer.

The other problem I see on cybersecurity is again going back to Industry 4.0. I think the people that are trying to implement this smart factory, or what people like to call “the internet of things.” It is a highly digitized handshake between machinery and then up and down to management, from shop floor management all the way through upper management of the company. These are easy targets for pirates. I think that’s an important thing to think about. Most companies do not have the capabilities of really protecting themselves from these kinds of threats, so I think simpler is better in any of these areas.

Just as a little bit of color, I am an autonomous vehicle skeptic and I am this way for two reasons: One is that the sensors needed for these truly autonomous vehicles and roads being all autonomous and transportation being autonomous, they’re definitely not good enough yet in all weather conditions. But I think the most important thing, unlike airplanes where you can afford to have multiple systems, people are never going to be able to afford a vehicle that has multiple computer systems. I think the potential for hacking, for economic reasons, political reasons, and terrorism reasons are just because some bad behavior on some kid in his back yard can affect this autonomous vehicle information grid. I have my doubts about autonomous vehicles because of cybersecurity.


DG:  Gary was very gracious with his time and answered a boatload of questions, many of which were able to include in this podcast. You’ll notice that I asked Gary to keep this noncommercial, so he hardly ever mentioned any of his company names or any specific products. We would, however, like for you to know, that Inductotherm Group is exhibiting at THERMPROCESS and GIFA in Hall 10 Stand B42 which perfectly straddles both of those shows. If you’re headed to Dusseldorf this year, I’d strongly encourage you to stop by and meet Gary and take a look at all the products he so politely refrained from mentioning in this podcast.

If you’d like to get in touch with Gary Doyon, feel free to email me directly at doug@heattreattoday.com and I’ll put you in touch with him.

If you’d like more Heat Treat Radio, you can simply Google “Heat Treat Radio”. Believe it or not, we are the first thing that comes up. Apparently, no one else is using those three words. From there, you’ll be able to link over to our website where you’ll find 18 other Heat Treat Radio episodes, including one on Inductotherm founder, Hank Rowan. Also, if you have a topic you’d like to see covered on Heat Treat Radio, please contact me directly by email. Again, that’s doug@heattreattoday.com.

Don’t forget that additional support for Heat Treat Radio is provided by the Industrial Heating Equipment Association (IHEA), where technical training is on the schedule for this September 24th and 25th in Cleveland, Ohio. Check out their website: www.ihea.org and learn more about the combustion seminars, safety and standard seminar, and their process heating seminar.

This and every other episode of Heat Treat Radio is the sole property of Heat Treat Today and may not be reproduced in part or in full without prior written approval from Heat Treat Today.

Jonathan Lloyd from Butler, Pennsylvania, produced and mixed this episode. I am your host, Doug Glenn. Thanks for listening.

 

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today
Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

Heat Treat Radio #17: Heat Treat Megatrends with Gary Doyon Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #16: George Smith and Dan Graham

Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio, a periodic podcast where Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, discusses cutting-edge topics with industry-leading personalities. Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript. To see a complete list of other Heat Treat Radio episodes, click here.


Audio: George Smith and Dan Graham

In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, speaks with George Smith and Dan Graham from SBS Corporation, based in Sarasota, Florida. SBS designs and engineers high-performing heat treatment solutions, including heat exchangers, filtration systems, and monitors. This episode will be especially interesting to companies who are wanting to dip their big toe into the Industry 4.0 or Internet-of-Things swimming pool but have been afraid to do so because of their cost or lack of organizational expertise. This episode introduces a relatively new product on the market that is specifically designed for entry-level applications.

Click the play button below to listen.


Transcript: George Smith and Dan Graham

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

“If your maintenance had the ability to monitor everything in your shop — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, didn’t eat, sleep, or take a break — how much would that guy be worth to you? Probably quite a bit! Now, if you could also simultaneously record every data point from each sensor in your shop by the minute and then call, text, or email you date, time, and set-point readings, I think he’d be worth a lot more.” ~ George Smith of SBS Corporation

Thanks for joining us. I’m your Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, also the publisher of Heat Treat Today, which you can find on the web at www.heattreattoday.com. The above was George Smith. George is one of two people we will talk to on this episode from SBS Corporation about their new entry-level and fully expandable monitoring system.

We’ll get back to George and our other SBS guest, Dan Graham, in just a few moments. But first, let me remind you that Heat Treat Today is ready to help you do heat treating better. Our editorial content is targeted at manufacturers with in-house heat treat shops, especially in the aerospace, automotive, medical and energy sectors as well as general manufacturing. Heat Treat Today believes that people are happier and make better decisions when they are well informed. And it is our passion to help you be well informed. We also like to inform you in ways that are current, like podcasts and targeted e-newsletters. You can subscribe to any of these services on our website. Take some time and check out the information we are providing and feel free to subscribe to any of the services we are offering. Go to www.heattreattoday.com/subscribe.

Doug Glenn (DG): Now let’s get back to our guest. Here is George Smith again, followed by Dan Graham, introducing themselves. Both of these guys were members of Heat Treat Today‘s inaugural class of 40 Under 40. First, here is George Smith.

George Smith, general manager at SBS Corporation

George Smith (GS): I am George Smith, and I am the general manager at SBS Corporation. I have been with the company for 6 years, and it is owned by my family.

Dan Graham (DGr): My name is Daniel Graham, and I have been with SBS Corporation since 2015, and I am the director of technology. I joined SBS as an intern at the tail end of my college career at Rollins College where I studied international business.

DG: Here now is George Smith expanding on his earlier description of the product SBS calls Watchdogg.

GS: [recording] “If you could also simultaneously record every data point from each sensor in your shop by the minute and then call, text, or email you date, time, and set-point readings, I think you’d be worth a lot more.” With Watchdogg, that’s exactly what you’re doing. The Watchdogg’s monitoring system monitors, records, and alerts the appropriate employee when a problem is going to happen before it actually becomes a problem. This can really apply to anything, whether that’s humidity in quench oil, low flow going to a heat exchanger or an over-temperature situation. Any place that you have a 4-20 mA signal available or a place to put a transmitter, you can monitor in real-time and predict what is going to go wrong.

Daniel Graham, director of technology, SBS Corporation

Just a quick example: In the middle of the winter in the Midwest, you’ve got a cooling fan up on your roof. Nobody is going to go check on that fan, but if it’s vibrating too much or pulling too many amps, that can be a sign that the bearing is going bad, so that fan is going to go soon. Watchdogg would text, call, or email you before that breakdown occurs based on those two things. So, if there is anything in your shop that can break down and cause a complete shutdown in production, the Watchdogg is perfect for you.

From the Beginning: SBS Corporation

DG: I have not typically associated SBS Corporation with this type of equipment, so if you don’t mind, give us a brief history of SBS, and what I think most people would typically associate you with, and then tell us about how you transitioned into something like Watchdogg.

DGr: SBS typically provides heating, cooling, filtering, monitoring, and safety equipment for the heat treat industry and we have been since 1974. Our flagship product is the Quench Air which is a quench oil cooler. It can be seen in nearly every major heat treat [shop] in the U.S., and we regularly sell our equipment in 38 countries worldwide. We started in Rochester, Michigan, and recently moved our manufacturing facility to Sarasota, Florida.

So, why text? We thought this was where the world was heading. Trying to find useful data to protect potential problems. Right now we have a product called the Aqua-Sense. This system detects humidity in oil and alerts via strobe and light when humidity is at unsafe levels in quench oil, so it is a local alarm. So, we kind of dipped our toes into technology, but as we looked at that product, we thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could get a text instead? Why do you need to be in the same room as the Aqua-Sense to get the alert?” In our research, we could not find any supplementing systems that could simply alert by text that was industrial, inexpensive, and reliable, so we just developed our own system.

DG: How long has the Aqua-Sense product been on the market?

DGr: Maybe 7 years.

DG: So basically, the Aqua-Sense was kind of the springboard that at least provided the impetus and the idea to go from an Aqua-Sense, where you’re basically monitoring one or just a couple of specific items, to be able to monitor a lot more and be able to send out text, or I suppose, you can communicate in whatever fashion you want, whether it be text, emails, or whatever, correct?

DGr: Correct. All of that is customizable. You can say – this person gets a text, this person gets a text and an email, and maybe the maintenance manager would get a text, an email, and a phone call.

DG: George, you mentioned this is a family business. Tell us a little bit more about you, and especially since both of you guys were in the inaugural class of Heat Treat Today’s 40 Under 40, it would be interesting to know how you got involved with the industry.

GS: I grew up building our product so I’d come in and spend my summers putting together heat exchangers, and became real familiar with the industry at a really young age, so it was kind of just a natural mesh when my dad called me one day and said, “Hey, will you come in and work for the family business?” I was actually working as a wetlands biologist at the time, and I was in a swamp, pretty close to an alligator when he called, and I thought, “You know what? Sure!”

DG: How about you, Dan? What’s your quick history?

DGr: George and I actually went to the same college and that’s how I got to know him. I finished a couple of years after he did, and in order to finish my degree, I needed to complete an internship. I was having trouble finding internships that I was interested in, and so I gave him a call and he had an opening for me. So I started working ay SBS, finished my degree, and haven’t left.

In-House Heat Treat Shops and Watchdogg

DG: So let’s try to dig in a little deeper. I know you guys have mentioned how companies, to a certain extent, might use Watchdogg. Most of the people who are reading this are going to be manufacturers who have their own in-house heat treat. So, they’ve got dedicated furnaces and things of that sort. How might they best use this? What is typical?

GS: This is a way they can bring their old pusher furnace, vacuum furnace, or whatever they’re using, and bring them right up into the 21st century. This is a really easy system to install on any existing equipment, and then you can monitor everything from your cellphone—like temperatures, vibrations, methane levels, I mean really anything that you can send a 4-20 mA signal with, and there are thousands of applications for that. If something is starting to go wrong anywhere on that furnace, you’re going to get a text message, and it’s going to tell you exactly where something is going wrong.

We have a customer in Tennessee that has rotary furnaces and if those rotary furnaces stop spinning, they basically “banana” and that is a $120,000 shop breakdown. If you can’t get a guy in there with a hand crank right away to get that furnace turning, [then] to save a power outage or for whatever reason a belt breaks, we can send a message out to all those guys that need to grab those hand cranks and get over there. You’re going to avert a very expensive breakdown.

DG: Because people may not be thinking along these lines, let’s give people a sense of what the different types of things that you can monitor. George, you’ve already mentioned some. You’re talking obviously quench oil humidity as one and about flow of liquids, etc. Give us some examples of the more common ones.

GS: Temperature, pressure, methanol levels, proximity sensors, level sensorsthere are kind of endless possibilities for it. What we’re doing right now at our shop is using one to weigh our bins so that we know when we’re getting low on certain long-lead items. When we get down to 45 pounds of ¼“-20 bolt, we know to order that, and we get a text message that reminds us to.

DG: That is very interesting and a cool way to do that. So it’s almost inventory control as opposed to process control.

GS: Right!

DG: So how many inputs can Watchdogg take? How many things can you monitor with one unit, or are these units serial? Can you connect them?

GS: You can connect them, but each actual bay station has twelve inputs available. For example, on our filters, we do pressure, temperature, humidity, and then you can get basically a scheduling of when you’re going to need to change all your quench oil filters in your shop. We can send a warning saying these are the ones that are coming up next.

Entry-Level Connectivity to the Internet of Things

DG: There are other companies that are coming out with stuff like this, right? Remote monitoring type of stuff, and we won’t mention names here because we’re not talking about them. But I’m sure a lot of our readers would know who those companies are. How does the Watchdogg differ from those products?

GS: The Watchdogg is industrial, but it is also a low-cost monitoring system. We’re going for people who are just getting into the industrial internet of things. We found in our research that typical systems of our competitors were much more expensive, or the home monitoring systems that would be lower cost couldn’t handle the transmitters that we would require in these facilities.

DG: It is safe to say it’s really a nice entry-level product for someone who might want to get started in this area?

GS: It’s one that you can grow with. The more that you add, you can work towards having your entire shop connected. You can start out with 12 different points; we call them failure points, which are basically those points in your shop where if something goes wrong there, it’s going to shut down production. The question is, what are the most important things that can go wrong, and then what transmitters can we use to predict a problem there? From there you can expand out to doing your filter maintenance or dissolve solids in quench oil.

DG: So basically anything you can measure that has a sensor that is going to put out a 4-20 mA signal.

GS: Yes, it’s going to capture that signal if it’s out of the normal range and it’s going to send you a message. But it’s also going to data log all of that, which brings us into Nadcap. You don’t have to have the guy with a clipboard. There is an unlimited amount of data that it can store and it’s also going to grab it when you want it, whether you want it grabbed once every minute or once every hour. It’s all adjustable. It also gives you a very friendly to read graph.

You can also cross-reference. Let’s say there is a correlation between the humidity in your oil and the temperature of your oil. You go onto the site, you click your temperature, you click your humidity, you pick your date range and it graphs them right together for you. So you can go back 2 years and ask, What temperature was my oil at 1:00 in the afternoon on December 24, 2017? You can go right to that day and figure out what each transmitter was reading.

Storage, Users, and Support

DG: So you said that it’s unlimited storage of data?

GS: Yes, it is unlimited storage.

DG: Now that tells me that it is cloud-based.

GS: It is cloud-based. It is stored on a local server in a secure facility which is protected by an SSL, multiple firewalls, and it is off-site from SBS.

DG: How about the number of users that can be on this?

DGr: Also unlimited. 15 or 1500. The idea is that it’s a safety device. You ought to be able to reach out to as many people as possible if something bad is going to happen.

GS: Let’s say, for example, that you’re reading all of a sudden that you’ve got a bunch of water in the bottom of your quench tank. Well, why don’t you let everybody in that building know to get out of there?

DG: Yes, right. I assume that you can customize. In other words, you’re not going to be sending one message to everybody all the time.

GS: No, you set up each transmitter individually. You put in a list that can call in sequential order or it can do a blast call where it just calls the entire list at the same time or texts and emails at the same time. When you do the sequential delivery, someone can actually acknowledge it as “I’m going to fix that problem,” and it will stop calling the rest of the list. And it also records who said, “I’m going to fix that problem”, who acknowledged that alarm.

DG: You guys are selling this domestically, North America, internationally? What’s the market area?

GS: We’re selling the cellular data-based one just in the USA. The Ethernet-based we’re selling internationally.

DG: What’s the difference between those two?

GS: The cellular has a cellular card in it that works like your cellphone, so you don’t need an internet connection. If you don’t want to run internet out in your heat treat, you can use a cellular-based one, which is dollars a month for the cellular subscription. The Ethernet has to have an Ethernet cable run to it.

DG: And you’re able to support this, I assume, remotely?

DGr: Correct. We have our site, which grabs all these points. You see your heat treat, you see all your sensors, you see where you’re at and a very easy to use website. That’s where you go to set up all your transmitters. So basically you connect power and the 4-20 mA signal to the Watchdogg box, and then you go online and you say, for example, this is going to be humidity, so it will be 0 – 100%. You put in 0 – 100%, 4-20 mA signal, and you want this to alarm when it hits 50% relative humidity—that’s halfway to having liquid water in your oil. Then you hit “Apply” and that sensor is up and running. These things take a matter of minutes to set up.

Let’s talk about difficulty of use. This is such an easy-to-use system. I think people tend to be intimidated by the Internet of Things or having web-based monitoring. It can be a scary word to a lot of people. This is a really simple system. My 70-year-old father went ahead and set his own up, and he is not a “techy” by any means. It takes minutes to set up. It arrives basically as plug in and play. You plug it into the wall, you plug your sensors in, and then we walk you through set-up online. With the customer’s permission, we can access their pages and walk them through setting up transmitters. The website itself really walks you through that on its own. It is very intuitive. Each transmitter takes about 3 minutes to set up, so if you sat down for a half hour, you could have your Watchdogg up and running.

Where Watchdogg Is Headed

DG: What are you planning for the future? What’s in the offing here?

DGr: We’ve talked about keeping the data storage on site, so having a dedicated server in the customer’s facility. Some people just don’t want that information to leave, no matter what. That’s something we see in the future that we’re working on currently. Something else that we have been working on is really meshing this Watchdogg with a customer’s current control panel. This is something that we see pretty soon in development. Basically, we would create like a middle man almost that would split the 4-20 mA signal so that you could use the Watchdogg and your control panel at the same time, using your existing 4-20 mA signals that are coming back to your main control panel on your furnace.

GS: We’re also working to improve our products, integrating Watchdogg into all of the equipment that we’ve already built—our Quench Air heat exchangers, filters, sand separators, scale removal systems.

We hate just having a light on the wall. We were at a heat treat a couple of years ago and they had one of our filter systems and somebody had put a rag over the alarm horn on it because it was annoying. Nobody knows when that filter is full because they can’t hear it go off. So instead, let’s text the maintenance manager and give him a heads up when he’s got 2 days before he needs to change out that filter bag and then we’ll send him another note when he needs to change it. That way he can schedule it ahead of time.

This is all about avoiding breakdowns for our customers. The most costly thing that can happen is having a breakdown. That was our whole focus in designing this—How can we stop breakdowns from occurring?

DG: Are you enjoying the development of it, and are you happy with how it’s rolled out so far?

GS: We’re having a lot of fun with it. We’re constantly wondering what else we can do with it as it has so many applications—in our own shop, much less customers calling saying, “You know, I’ve got this in place and it’s got two more slots open on it, can I do this . . . ?” Then we get to figure out how do they do that, and then in 99% of the cases, our answer is, “Yes, you can do that!”

We had a customer that wanted to monitor his methanol. He called us and said, “Can I do that? I’ve got a methanol transmitter.” We said, “Absolutely!” So he plugged it in and now he’s monitoring his methanol.

DG: Do you tend to find people that will buy it, plug in a couple of things, and then find other things to plug into it because they like it so much?

GS: Yes, exactly. Anything you can think of. Like I was saying with our 4-20 mA scales that we’re using, that wasn’t the intended, original use for this, but we’re not running out of parts that we need!

DG: That’s a relatively innovative approach to it, I think—even inventory control! That’s pretty cool!

So if you’re in a company that is interested in moving into the 21st century and are looking for a fully expandable monitoring system to introduce you to the internet of things, this Watchdogg system from SBS Corporation might be just the ticket. For more information, you should go to www.sbscorporation.com or contact me directly at doug@heattreattoday.com and I’ll introduce you to George Smith or Dan Graham.


You can find more Heat Treat Radio episodes by googling Heat Treat Radio. Believe it or not, we’ll be the first nonpaid thing that pops up. You can also subscribe to Heat Treat Radio on iTunes or SoundCloud. Don’t forget to visit our website frequently. We post one new piece of heat treat information every weekday. You can subscribe to our daily e-newsletter or you can subscribe to our growing number of industry-specific heat treat e-newsletters like our Leaders in Aerospace heat treat monthly e-newsletter, which will debut soon, if not already. We’ll also be introducing a similar version for our automotive industry heat treaters as well as our medical and energy heat treat readers. Watch for them in the near future. Also, since we know that you can’t solve all of your own heat treat problems, feel free to reference our list of heat treat consultants on our website or by googling heat treat consultants. We should be one of the top 2 or 3 results that pop up. Or you can simply type www.heattreattoday.com/consultant into your browser.

This and every other episode of Heat Treat Radio is the sole property of Heat Treat Today and cannot be reproduced without specific written permission from Heat Treat Today.

This episode was produced by the recently engaged Jonathan Lloyd of Butler, Pennsylvania. Congratulations, Jonathan! I’m your host, Doug Glenn. Thanks for listening.

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today
Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

Heat Treat Radio #16: George Smith and Dan Graham Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #15: Jim Oakes

Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio, a periodic podcast where Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, discusses cutting-edge topics with industry-leading personalities. Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript. To see a complete list of other Heat Treat Radio episodes, click here.


Audio: Jim Oakes

In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, speaks with Jim Oakes from Super Systems, Inc., based in Cincinnati, Ohio. SSI develops and manufactures products for the thermal processing industry, including probes, analyzers, flow meters, controllers, software solutions, and engineered systems. Jim Oakes of Super Systems corrals the data about data and makes sense of its use in the heat treating world, covering topics that include the evolution of data collection, sensor technology, data collection for preventative maintenance, operational benefits of data collection, Super Systems data capture explained, the Cloud and security.

Click the play button below to listen.


Transcript: Jim Oakes

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

On this episode of Heat Treat Radio, we’re discussing data.  If there is one thing that is significantly changed in the Heat Treat world in the last decade, it’s the quantity and quality of data.  What the heck do you do with all the data?  How do you collect it?  How do you decide which data sets the capture and after you capture them, how can you learn anything from them? Data, data everywhere, and not a drop to drink!

Welcome to Heat Treat radio.  I am your host and publisher of Heat Treat Today, Doug Glenn.  Today, we’re going to talk to one of the industries leading authorities on data, Jim Oakes from Super Systems Inc.  But before we do, why don’t you take a little cyber trip over to heattreattoday.com and see all the data we have there?  We’ve got aerospace heat treat data, we’ve got automotive heat treat data, we’ve got medical heat treat data and energy heat treat data as well as general manufacturing heat treat data.  In fact, we’re adding at least one new piece of heat treating data every day.  On Tuesday, we publish technical content.  We call it ‘Technical Tuesday.  If you’re a manufacturer within in-house heat treat, we’re pretty sure you’re going to find heattreattoday.com really helpful.

Before we get started, here is a word about this episode’s sponsor:  Today’s Heat Treat Radio is brought to you by Dry Coolers, designers and builders of industrial cooling systems and the professional engineering services surrounding those systems.  As a leader in the heat treat industry for decades, they’re located in Oxford, Michigan and supply cooling systems for the aerospace, automotive, medical and energy industries, plus many others.  If you have any industrial cooling needs, call Dry Coolers.  You can find them on the web at www.drycoolers.com or by phone at 800-525-8173.

Doug Glenn (DG):  Let’s get started on today’s topic — data. Our guest is Jim Oakes from Super Systems Inc.  Hi, Jim. Take a minute and introduce yourself to our listeners.

Jim Oakes (JO):  Hi, Doug, this is Jim Oakes with Super Systems. We’re a technology provider for the heat treating industry. We focus on sensors, controls, and software for the thermal processing and heat treating industry, and we’ve been doing that for over 20 years now.

DG:  Jim, how many years have you been in the heat treat industry?

JO:  15 years.

DG:  Over the past 15 years, what impresses you about the way we are using data now as opposed to the way we used it back then?

JO:  Well, a couple things, actually. My introduction to the industry was actually longer ago than 15 years. I started in an internship, and oddly enough, at that internship — it was for a technology provider in the heat treating industry — I was involved in doing data capture from a PLC at a Timken plant in Gaffney, South Carolina, and that was 25 years ago. Data acquisition has been happening not just in the heat treating industry, but in manufacturing for a very long time. What’s really been changing though, if you look at the last 10 to 20 years, is that the technology is lending itself, because of cost, both from a storage standpoint and processing standpoint, to really being accessible everywhere. You have more information that is coming out of microprocessor controls or PLCs or programmable logic controllers throughout the shop floor. Whether it be a piece of thermal processing equipment or a cooler or anything that is on the shop floor, we have tons of information that is becoming available. Before you might have been worried about how you would store all that information, but that is a thing of the past. The amount of information, and actually making sense of all of it, is where the challenge lies today, certainly not collecting it.

The Evolution of Data Collection

DG:  Ten years ago, are you seeing us collecting anything now that we didn’t collect then? Are we collecting more stuff than we were collecting back then, and if so, what are we collecting now that we weren’t collecting before?

JO:  That’s a great question, Doug, because back then a lot of the data was very specific and focused on process-related information. Now, there is additional data that is being collected that can be used for some predictive modeling, if you will. It’s not just proof of process that meets the industry requirements. Your customers were expecting that if you used a heat treatment process, then you had to really prove you performed that. Well, that’s a thing of the past. Of course, any data acquisition system that you have today, or anything data-related is going to provide you with that. But now there is more data, so on any day, in any heat treat facility, captive or commercial, I’d say there are 750,000 to well over a million data points that are being collected. Honestly, most people don’t even know that they’re collecting all that information. Their laser focus is on that one specific requirement. All that information that you can have is coming from these microprocessors or PLCs, so the amount of information today versus what you were gathering way back when is really one of the biggest differences.

DG:  What are some of the technologies that have driven that change so that now we can collect more?

JO:  A couple things. Standardized protocols have been around for capturing data, so you have to have a mechanism to get the data from all of these different pieces of equipment. That’s one piece. It’s existed for a long time. But if you think about it, if you take the shop floor today versus 10 years ago versus 20 years ago, there is a PC everywhere now.  You have a networking infrastructure that exists that maybe wasn’t there 20 years ago. Maybe you had a limited number of people that would be able to absorb that information and utilize it. Today, everyone is using a computer. Everybody is using a hand-held device. Now, all of a sudden, that information is readily available to lots of people, and that’s where the difference is. Not only do you have the networking infrastructure on the manufacturing on the shop floor, but you also have the technology that is available to everybody. Computers are everywhere.

Sensor Technology

DG:  One of the contentions I have is that the reason we’re able to gather so much more data now is that we’ve had advances in sensor technology. Maybe you can address this a bit.  I think there are things we are capturing now that we weren’t even able to capture before because of advances in sensors, whether it be IR sensors, or whatever.

JO: Yes, you’re right, Doug. If you look at the amount of information that is readily available, it is because of the technology that is available to capture it. There is all this sensor technology, whether it’s a limit switch identifying a basket or a tray moving to a specific location, or an infrared device that is used maybe for just measuring temperature on the outside of a furnace shell or an infrared analyzer used for analyzing the gas inside the chamber where the parts are being heat treated. Now you have the ability to take that additional information and use it for a decision making process.

And now you have all this data. Nobody is concerned about the amount of information you’re storing. Nobody ever says, “Well, we’re not going to have that much space.” The problem is people and time in actually evaluating all of the data. No doubt, using a sensor to monitor vibration of a pump or motor, or looking at the current usage, or looking at gas usage — the list goes on of the amount of information you can gather and this is because the cost has gone down. Each of those specific devices are now lower in cost and reasonably achievable from a data capture standpoint.

DG:  We might describe it as to say something like:  In the past, we used to put all the sensors inside the furnace, as you mentioned, to validate the process and things of that sort. It seems now that, because of cost of sensors and things of that sort, the fact that you can gather all this data and actually do something with it now, that we’re getting sensors on the outside of the equipment to make sure not that just the process is validated, but that the equipment is also validated, if you will, so that we can see troubles coming and that type of thing. Do you agree?

JO:  Yes, there is no doubt if you look at some of the benefits of what we see in the heat treating industry today. Of course, operational efficiencies are important. Now you’re taking the data that you’re gathering, again it’s not going to just prove that you’re running the parts properly, but you’re able to make better decisions from an operational standpoint. You can look for better load planning, you can look for reducing time between loads or gap time between loads and identify what’s causing those. The other thing is using this information for preventive maintenance. The equipment manufacturers are doing a great job with providing preventive maintenance programs and it is because of the sensors and the data acquisition systems that you are able to even just locally to that piece of equipment or gather from a plant-wide standpoint. There is no doubt, that some of the biggest benefits are from doing the data capture and then having this different sensor technology that allows for the preventive maintenance programs that can be put into place.

DG:  Isn’t that, in fact, where huge benefits can be gained, in the area of preventative maintenance?

Preventative Maintenance

JO:  Unplanned downtime is a huge cost component in heat treating. Anything you can do to manage the up-time of your equipment is beneficial. Of course, planned downtime gives you an opportunity to work with customers, work with the product that is flowing through your facility as well as managing the incoming parts that you might need for that equipment. So it’s a huge benefit. You can still do preventive maintenance programs that are in place; it doesn’t have to be with new equipment. You just have to be smart about the things that are important to that equipment and then utilize that data. I always say that data acquisition is very underutilized when it comes to maintenance. The maintenance department is usually one of the busiest groups within the thermal processing industry. A lot of domain knowledge goes into the equipment, but they have a lot of this information that is readily accessible to them, so if they could look at this information and anticipate that fan is going to fail, that motor is going to fail, that there is a short on your electrical elements, or whatever that might be, you’re going to be able to plan for the downtime. That’s going to help from an operational standpoint as well as reduce the amount of time that that furnace might be out of commission.

DG:  And when you’re not planning ahead, when you’re responding to fires rather than preventing fires, so to speak, it is usually the maintenance guys who catch the brunt of it.

JO:  Yes, that poor guy walks into work every day dreading work because he’s got a crisis on his hands every single time. If you can prevent that crisis, so he can plan to do something, it’s a totally different work environment.

Let’s take a quick break here and remind you that additional support for today’s Heat Treat Radio episode is being provided by Dry Coolers. If there is one thing we know about thermal processes, it’s that things get hot, and to remove that heat from critical areas, you need a system that is reliable, and if necessary, designed for your specific needs. The fact is, Dry Coolers has been custom designing and providing standardized units for decades, and they have the staff and experience to take care of any of your industrial cooling needs. If you’re a manufacturer with in-house heat treating and you need an industrial strength cooling system, make you first, and only call to Dry Coolers. You can look them up on the web at www.drycoolers.com.

Now let’s get back to our interview with Jim Oakes of Super Systems.

DG:  Where are you seeing data being used well?

Operational Benefits of Data Collection

JO:  The people that are taking advantage of the information are of course meeting the industry requirements. They are staying on top of things like CQI-9 or NadCap requirements from a data collection and meeting the customer requests. That is the foundation. I always say that in a lot of cases, that is a big driver for electronic data. But the people that are really taking advantage of that are using that information for operational benefits. Operational can be both from a maintenance standpoint as well as just improving your overall operations.  You’re looking at, “Why do I have downtime of two hours between loads on this particular piece of equipment?” So now, instead of using somebody to go search the shop for, and walk out and get a paper chart, you now have people that can actually evaluate the downtime between loads. You can look at gap times and identify what the issue is. Is it because I don’t have enough fixtures? Is it because I don’t have enough labor? The labor market is tight right now, so you want to use something that is going to provide you with something to maximize efficiency with what you have. Challenges might be your labor or might be your equipment. Are you making the most of your equipment? You can look at that data. You have tons of information. If you can evaluate that, it gives you an opportunity to make better decisions. That is one area.

The other area is, how can you utilize the data and push that out to all your people. Let everybody look at this, but only give them the pieces of information that are important. The maintenance department is going to be interested in maybe the percent output, the current going to the electrical elements, vibration, or water temperature. That information is relevant and if they could isolate that information, they can sit down with their cup of coffee in the morning and they can evaluate this information. Before they have to react to all the firestorms that they have in front of them, maybe they can actually plan for some preventative maintenance activities based off what the data is telling them. The right information to the right person is really critical. The people that are doing this are the ones that are really taking full advantage of the information that they have with a SCADA package.

DG:  Is there someone out there that is actually doing it?

JO:  Yes, absolutely! There is no doubt about it. People are taking resources, and instead of being reactive and trying to find stuff on the shop floor, they are using the system to identify, answer customer needs and then create those operational efficiencies. People absolutely, no doubt, are taking advantage of that. They are looking at shortening time between loads, notifying users when loads are done so they can get the parts out and then put new parts in. This is happening with mobile devices and/or emails so that the right people are notified at the right times.

DG:  Give us the lowdown on what SSI is doing in this area.

The SSI Data Capture

JO:  Our foundation provides us the ability to provide information everywhere. This starts with the sensor and taking that sensor data into a controlling equipment, whether course microprocessor control PLC. But you need to make that readily available so that people can make decisions quickly. Proof of process is one thing of course, but so is giving access to information, whether by mobile device or a messaging system. So we’re taking all of the information that we’ve already done in the past and providing that into the technology that people are utilizing today. We see huge opportunities from being able to go through the existing data that’s there, and then look at better ways to capture data based off the technology that is becoming available, whether it’s how we capture usage of gas or usage of electricity or just process-related data to make sure that the right person is getting the right information.

DG:  Many of the folks reading this article are manufacturers with their own in-house heat treat plants, and I’m guessing that many of them are wondering what they can do to move in this direction. What should these folks do next?

JO:  First step is to do an inventory of the equipment and be realistic about what data you can get out of them, highlight the drivers, meaning what are your business drivers for capturing that information, and then at that point decide if it is just the infrastructure from a data acquisition standpoint or, if you want to get some bigger bang for your buck, maybe you want to make an investment in some equipment that is technology down at each piece of equipment level, to capture that so that you can realize the gains based off of capturing that information.

DG:  If a company wants to move in this direction, must they go cloud-based?

The Cloud and Security

JO:  No, definitely not. The cloud is a tool that allows basically data and information to be stored externally. The reality is a virtual server in many degrees can potentially be a cloud-based system, but it doesn’t have to be. A large number of the installs we have are storing information locally and then transferring data to the cloud for backup recovery.

DG:  Address cloud-based security, if you would.

JO:  It is a huge topic from a security standpoint and I would say that most of the companies that use the SCADA packages are on-premise. That is not all of them, but most of them are. This means that if you are on premise, you have a private network where it is not accessible from anywhere unless you create that tunnel into that private network using virtual private network. That’s what you refer to as on-premise. Then you have cloud-based system, which is really just pushing that information up to a server form which provides access into it. Of course, there is a security aspect regarding accessing that information. A strategy has to be put forth that prevents external access to that information. In many cases, if you decide that you’re going to go to a cloud-based system, you’ve already thought through that and you’ve probably already transitioned some other systems to that. Anyone that is going to a cloud-based system has some security requirements to prevent any illegal or unwanted access.

DG:  Jim, thanks for your time.

JO:  Doug, thank you for having me on Heat Treat Radio. I really appreciate the opportunity. This topic is important to us here at Super Systems. As a technology provider to the industry, we really like to get the word out there about what types of things are coming, whether it’s making data accessible at the hand-held level, or helping make decisions, it is something that is near and dear to our heart and that is because a lot of our customers really find this necessary. I appreciate you spending the time with me and I really look forward to having discussions around this in the future.

That was Jim Oakes of Super Systems Inc. talking about data and how to get the most out of that data. If you’d like to get in touch with Jim, please email me directly at doug@heattreatoday.com and I’ll put you in touch with Jim. Super Systems can be found on the web at supersystems.com.

Suffice it to say, you will be hearing more from Heat Treat Today about data and how to use it more effectively for your business. To see more heat treat technology articles, go to www.heattreattoday.com. We post a new heat treat item, either a technical article or some industry news, every weekday. If you’d like more Heat Treat Radio, simply Google H”eat Treat Radio”. We’re the first thing that pops up. You can also subscribe to Heat Treat Radio on iTunes or SoundCloud.

One last reminder that today’s episode of Heat Treat Radio was underwritten by Dry Coolers. If you have need for any industrial cooling system, give the good people at Dry Coolers a call.  They are on the web at www.drycoolers.com.

This and every other episode of Heat Treat Radio is the sole property of Heat Treat Today and may not be reproduced without express written permission and appropriate attribution from Heat Treat Today. Jonathan Lloyd of Butler, PA, produced and mixed this episode. I am your host, Doug Glenn.  Thanks for listening.

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today
Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

Heat Treat Radio #15: Jim Oakes Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #14: ITPS and ThermProcess 2019

Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio, a periodic podcast where Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, discusses cutting-edge topics with industry-leading personalities. Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript. To see a complete list of other Heat Treat Radio episodes, click here.


In this conversation, Doug Glenn, publisher of Heat Treat Today and host of Heat Treat Radio, interviews Anne Goyer from IHEA, Eva Rowe from Messe Dusseldorf North America, and Peter Sherwin from Eurthorm by Schneider Electric to discuss the International Thermprocess Summit 2018 and Thermprocess 2019.

Click the play button below to listen.

If you’re looking for that ONE place where you can invest your time and know that you’ll walk away happy, then today’s Heat Treat Radio episode is one you’ll want to hear. In this podcast, Anne Goyer from IHEA, Eva Rowe from Messe Dusseldorf North America, and Peter Sherwin from Eurthorm by Schneider Electric join Heat Treat Radio host Doug Glenn to discuss the two most important international heat treating events – one in North America and one in Europe — the International Thermprocess Summit 2018 (ITPS) and Thermprocess 2019.

Doug’s three guests review the talks and news from the North American event, ITPS, which was held earlier this year, July 30-August 1, in Atlanta, Georgia. Peter Sherwin describes the talks that impressed or stood out to him the most. Anne Goyer addresses the floor talk from attendees and vendors regarding future shows. Eva Rowe reveals what participants can expect at Thermprocess 2019, which will be a quartet of shows which they’ve called the “Bright World of Metals.” The four events that are combined into this “Bright World of Metals” are Metec, Thermprocess, GIFA, and Newcast. All will take place in Dusseldorf, Germany, next June 25-29, 2019.

And don’t forget that here in North America, the two leading heat treating trade shows are Furnaces North America in the even-numbered years, and ASM’s Heat Treat Show in the odd-numbered years. To find out more about any North American heat treating event, visit www.heattreattoday.com and take a look at our calendar of events under the Resources Tab on our home page.

If you’d like to get in touch with any of the people from today’s Heat Treat Radio podcast, please feel free to contact me by email at doug@heattreattoday.com. And don’t forget to check out Thermprocess 2019 by going to www.thermprocess-online.com. Start making your plans to attend now. June 25-29, 2019 is just around the corner.

To find out more about the potential International Thermprocess Summit 2020, stay connected to Heat Treat Today or visit the Industrial Heating Equipment Association’s website at www.ihea.org. Both sites will post any future dates and locations for a 2020 event if or when the decision is made.

For more Heat Treat Radio, Google “heat treat radio” or look under the Resources Tab on www.heattreattoday.com.

Special thanks goes to Dry Coolers for their support of Heat Treat Radio. Dry Coolers, cooling systems for industry … on the web at www.drycoolers.com.

This episode, as with all episodes of Heat Treat Radio, are the sole property of Heat Treat Today and may not be reproduced in part or in whole without express written consent from Heat Treat Today.

If you have a topic you’d like covered on Heat Treat Radio, please contact Doug Glenn at doug@heattreattoday.com.

This episode was produced and mixed by Jonathan Lloyd, Butler, Pennsylvania.

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today
Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

Heat Treat Radio #14: ITPS and ThermProcess 2019 Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #13: C3 Data

Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio, a periodic podcast where Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, discusses cutting-edge topics with industry-leading personalities. Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript. To see a complete list of other Heat Treat Radio episodes, click here.


Audio: C3 Data

In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews Nathan Wright of C3Data, a company based in Indianapolis, Indiana, which assists heat treaters and calibration labs ensure furnace compliance with Nadcap, AMS2750 & CQI-9. Their discussion about how you can cut the amount of time you spend testing and repairing furnace calibration report for your CQI9 and NADCAP compliant furnaces — from what might currently be up to an hour or more, per furnace, to somewhere down around five minutes per furnace — will help you imagine the day when you can have a single dashboard in your office where you can see in real time whether your furnaces are currently compliant with those standards or your own custom standards.  Imagine not having to guess if your furnace is compliant or having to wait until the next SAT or TUS is performed to find out that you just ran two or three loads in a furnace that is out of spec.  Also, imagine being able to click a few buttons and have a fully code compliant report printed out in minutes for when the auditor shows up at your door.  After listening to today’s Heat Treat Radio podcast, you’ll be one step closer to making this a reality in your shop.

Click the play button below to listen.


Transcript: C3 Data

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Nathan Wright of C3 Data

Welcome to Heat Treat Radio.  I’m your host and publisher of Heat Treat Today, Doug Glenn.  Before we jump on the phone with Nathan Wright, of C3 Data, let me encourage you to visit heattreattoday.com for more helpful heat treat information.  Manufacturers with in-house heat treat departments, especially in the aerospace, automotive, medical and energy sectors as well as general manufacturing, find this site especially helpful.  Every weekday, at least one new piece of technical or commercial news is posted to the site.  The site also includes a new feature:  Heat Treat Consultants.   If you have ever wondered where you can find a simple, concise list of heat treat consultants, check out Heat Treat Today.  You can find it on the site under the “Resources” tab.  Today’s Heat Treat Today radio episode is brought to you by Dry Coolers.  Designers and builders of industrial cooling systems and the professional engineering services surrounding those systems.  As a leader in the heat treat industry for decades, they are located in Oxford, Michigan, and supply cooling systems for the aerospace, automotive, medical and energy industries plus many others.  If you have an industrial cooling need, call Dry Coolers.  They are on the web at www.drycoolers.com. Or you can reach them by phone at 800-525-8173. 

Heat Treat Radio jumped on the phone and called Nathan Wright to discuss this new technology.  Here’s a lightly edited version of our conversation.  Nathan is a long-time pyrometry guy with multiple pyrometry labs around North America, including a lab in Mexico.  With several decades of experience in the industry, Nathan was pretty convinced there was a better way to do pyrometry and furnace compliance.  Here’s Nathan to explain what it is, exactly that his company, C3 Data does for the heat treat market.   

Nathan Wright (NW):  Heat treaters and other companies come to us to help them reduce the cost to comply with NADCAP.  So if you are a NADCAP heat treater, and or trying to become compliant with CQI9, you are an ideal client.  So, companies come to us to help them reduce the cost associated with trying to comply with those two specifications, specifically with respect to the pyrometry requirement; so, in terms of time and money spent, we help them reduce those costs.  We do this by leveraging two very simple technologies:  the cloud and mobile devices. And we use these to eliminate virtually all of the time spent writing reports and calculating correction factors and ensuring that all the equipment that you use is compliant.  We build these higher specs into the software so that all the end user has to do after they set their exponents is plug in the readings, and we do the rest.   

Doug Glenn (DG): And it’s cloud-based? 

NW:  That’s correct.  It’s cloud-based in terms of where all the data is stored.  But we do have, as I mentioned earlier, the mobile technology that is used, sort of a modern-day version of the clipboard.  When a pyrometry technician is out in the field, rather than writing down on a piece of paper or lugging around a laptop with an excel spreadsheet, there is an app specifically designed for those types of testing requirements.  And that’s done all on the mobile device.  The app really knows everything about the furnace when you walk up to it.  We integrate QR codes into our calibration labels that get printed, and simply by scanning the barcode on the furnace, the app knows everything about your furnace from the furnace class to the operation ranges to the instrument types, the calibration points, everything about it.  So, in terms of training and the technician making sure that that furnace is tested and compliant with the specs, it’s kind of a no-brainer.  Walk up, scan the QR code, and the app kind of walks you through a tutorial step by step, and at the end, it gives you sort of a green means go, red means no indicator as to whether or not the test that you are performing passed or failed.   

DG:  I understand the spec is built right into the app.  So, if, or should I say when, the spec is updated, your app is updated and the end user pretty much automatically has the new spec immediately on his device.   

NW:  That’s correct.  And we intentionally sit on a couple of the committees — CQI9 as well as the AMAC committee — when you talk about AMS . . . really just to participate in the conversation to understand what changes are being made to the new revisions of both of those specifications.  So, proactively, we have our coders in the background sort of prewriting some of the code that may or may not become part of the specification.  So that from day 1, all the customer would have to do is refresh their web browser (for the web version), and on the mobile app version they simply do the auto update on their app, and they know moving forward that every test they do from that day forward is in compliance with what will be the AMS 27 revision F, and of course with CQI9, it will be rev. 4.  So, yes, we address those concerns by being actively connected with those communities and ensuring the software automatically gets updated.   

A Better Way: The Story Behind C3 Data

DG:  So, tell us a bit about how this all came about.  And also about you.   

NW:  I started doing pyrometry work, I’d say calibrations, surveys, and SATs, approximately twenty years ago.  And I always had in my mind that there had to be a better way of doing this type of testing.  Having sat in literally hundreds of NADCAP audits myself, there’s just a lot of human error that goes into — I guess the root of the non-conformances, and I even tried to bring a C3 Data like product to life back in the most powerful hand-out tool that you could get — a palm pilot.  So, you can see that I’ve been thinking about this in depth for quite a while.  And anyone who’s ever had to do an SAT, and all that’s required to make sure the equipment is current and then actually doing the reporting, knows the agonizing pain that goes into doing this type of testing.  So, after twenty years of doing that I have a unique perspective on how to build this from the industry.  So we started building the product, the C3 Data product, for our own pyrometry labs.  I’ve been doing this for twenty years. I own two labs, and as I mentioned earlier, we just wanted to build a tool that would eliminate most of the arduous and daunting parts of the pyrometry compliance.  Anyone who is responsible to comply with NADCAP, CQI9 – they know that it’s the paperwork administration, it’s the scheduling, and frankly, sometimes it’s just the math.  So, in a sense, we can honestly say that we built this product with each customer in mind because we do the same things that they do and we initially built it for us.  It’s pretty exciting to get the word from our subscribers that they are saving a lot of time and eliminating the NCRs.  I talk about saving time. . . . We’ve had customers tell us as much as 60 percent of the time that they were spending doing testings and reportings, has been reduced by 60 percent.  We are pretty excited about those numbers.   

DG: I imagine it’s not only the time savings that is a real benefit, but the peace of mind knowing that you are compliant – especially when the auditor comes a-knockin’!   

NW:  Yes, I would say that the most comforting feeling  — from one of our subscribers – is going into a NADCAP audit knowing, with confidence, that all the information that is required is there.  Not only is it there, but it is all compliant.  No matter what report you pull up, whether it’s a certification for a thermocouple or for a daylogger or for a field test instrument.  Any type of test result is insured and guaranteed to be compliant because the system is built around those specifications and doesn’t allow you to make some of the most common mistakes that are attributed to about 50 percent of the non-conformances really are pyrometry related.  So the confidence that the end user has is really high going into an audit.  And anyone that has been in an audit knows that that is the most nervous day.  

DG:  You mentioned “we” when you were talking about the company.  Tell me a bit about the company now.  You have some pyrometry labs, correct?   

NW:  We do, we have a couple of laboratories.  One in Mexico, one in the midwestern part of the United States, but in the last three years, I’ve sort of taken a back seat to those companies in order to really focus on C3 Data.  We’re headquartered in Indianapolis and the product has actually been under development for about five years although it has only been commercially available, I guess, going on now about three years.  So we employ a staff of five here in the U.S., and more recently we’ve established sales and support channels in Europe – covering the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.  So, we are excited about that new relationship and getting that product in the hands of a large segment of the heat treat world over there.   

DG:  Are there different standards there in Europe?  Or are they all the same?   

NW:  No, No.  Very similar.  I mean, it’s the AMS 2750 for NADCAP accredited companies and CQI9 for the automotive.  In fact, well, CQI9 was authored by the big three here in the U.S., and for several years, Europe was not really recognizing that standard and more recently with several automotive recalls in Europe from European manufacturers, they were really looking for a way to minimize the large expense associated with those non-compliances and recalls.  And so, they really have, in the last nine/ten months – more recently — started to adopt CQI9 pro-actively because rather than write their own specifications they wanted to adopt it.  So we are pretty excited that we don’t have to customize the software for yet another specification.  I will say, speaking of custom specification, the software is not limited to just AMS and CQI9.  We do have a build-your-own spec feature that is built into C3 Data that allows you to take a Boeing spec that by and large is AMS 2750 but has its own nuances that are associated with an individual prime like Boeing, just to use them as an example.  And so we allow users to go in and build their own specifications to ensure compliance to not just the prime specifications that we typically think of (i.e. AMS and CQI9).   

DG:  And now for a quick reminder that this episode of Heat Treat Radio is being sponsored by Dry Coolers.  Dry Coolers can provide open evaporative towers, closed loop evaporative towers, air cooled or dry cooler closed loop systems, chillers, vapor coolers and condensers, pumping stations, control panels, emergency backup systems, filtration and solids removal equipment, as well as complete plant-wide water systems.  If you have any industrial cooling need, call Dry Coolers.  They are on the web at www.drycoolers.com or by phone at 800-525-8173.  

C3 Data in Action

DG: So, Nathan, how would this look for a heat treater?  How do they interface with C3 Data?  You mentioned subscribers.   

NW:  It’s set up as what we call “software as a service”.  So, unlike a traditional software product where you buy it once and own it, and then pay for incremental updates, we just have a subscription service that the user can customize based on their needs.  If you are just using the software to perform SATs, there is a fixed monthly fee. But if you wanted, a year later, to add temperature uniformity surveys, or instrument calibration, you can incrementally bump up and add on plugins to the software.  It’s all web-based so the beauty of this is that there is no IT that needs to be involved.  There’s not a lot of technology that the end user needs to have other than how to go to the website and log in to their password-protected account.  You can increase or decrease your subscription levels at any time and it’s month to month.  There are a lot of advantages to this software model because it is low risk.  You can try it out.  You can cancel it a month later and decide that it’ not for you.  So, we like that.  The biggest, most powerful part of software and servers being web-based is, as we mentioned when these specifications get updated, we can simply update them in the background and the end user just has to refresh their browser and instantly the update is made.  The system is very intuitive. By the way, the subscription service comes with unlimited phone and email support.  So, as you bring on new users, we will train them.  This is typically done through a “go to meeting” online, so there is no need to incur travel expenses. And we can do a twelve-minute meeting, we can do a two-hour meeting with a large group if we need to.  We can customize the training based on the skill set of the group or group of individuals that are using the software.

But in terms of the setup, I think the biggest hurdle is getting all the information into the system.  The system only knows what you tell it.  So, there is a section in the portal where the user can go in and must go in and define all the furnace settings. So, we talked earlier about instrument types, operating ranges, furnace classes, all those types of things.  Once you define all those, what we call furnace set up variables, the system will hand walk you through everything.  I guess my only point is that there is a little up-front investment to populate the user account with all the furnace and instrument information.  That’s probably the biggest hurdle for any user because we have knocked down all the other hurdles – the training, the updating of the software as we mentioned is a simple refresh of the browser.  So, it’s very intuitive but there is a little bit of upfront time involved – and we say about five to ten minutes per furnace is the typical amount of time spent and that can be reduced over time by getting people familiar with the software.  So, if you are a typical, well I shouldn’t say typical because there is no typical heat treat size, but a heat treater that has ten furnaces, it might take you a couple hours to populate your system.   

DG: Well, five to ten minutes per furnace does not sound like much.  Tell us a bit about this dashboard.   

NW:  Dashboard culminates all the information that’s being populated in a single system, and it gives the ability to display a real-time plant overview of all the furnaces and their real-time compliant status against the specifications.  So, we have customers out there currently that have 60- to 70-inch television monitors displaying the C3 dashboard.  And in their procedure, the operators of the furnaces are told that before they load a furnace, the first thing that they do is that they look at their C3 Data dashboard and they verify that that furnace is either green, yellow or red.  Depending on the company, they may have different protocols, but ultimately if it is red, you are supposed to stop as the furnace operator and go to your boss and say, “Hey, I can’t load this furnace because it is not compliant.  What should I do?” And, there is a lot of power in that because, you know, currently the systems that exist today are spreadsheets or, worse yet, printed pieces of paper that just sit stagnant in a filing cabinet and they don’t tell you anything in real time.  Meanwhile, furnaces are being loaded  — potentially furnaces that are not compliant — being loaded with product that are safety critical parts for the aerospace and automotive industry.  So, dashboard really takes that culmination of a lot of details of compliance-related information and gives it to you instantaneously.  This also gives the ability for a quality assurance manager of a company that may have multiple locations to sort of figure out where he or she should be focusing their efforts on helping with furnace compliance.  Case in point, if you have seven different facilities that you are responsible for as a quality assurance manager, you are going to want to go to those places where more furnaces are red and not really spend any of your time in those locations where all those furnaces are green.  And so this allows them to have that real-time visibility without ever leaving their desk and make real-time decisions about where they need to focus their time and energy.   

DG: Any specific heat treaters that will find this system helpful?  Or is it pretty much broad-based?   

NW:  Generally speaking, any heat treater that needs to ensure high quality should be using a system like C3 Data.  And many do.  The problem is that most people have failed at what we call rolling their own.  These systems range the gambit. They are also susceptible to the same issues.  Namely, the cost to manage these cobbled together mixtures of cell spreadsheets, and outlook for scheduling and other tools that they combine and rely on, and there is usually what we call the “key man” risk associated with these systems.  And that employee may or may not always be employed there to keep the system up to date.  So this usually causes frustration and ends up costing much, much more than people think.  But, to be specific to your question, the customers that are NADCAP, or just simply required to comply with AMS 2750 or CQI9, they rely on the software and so any customer that’s, as we mentioned, that’s looking to comply with those specifications, C3, all those specs are included out of the box with C3.  That would be our ideal demographic.   

DG:  Anything else like it in the marketplace?  And if so, how does C3 differ? 

NW:  There are a few companies that have attempted to build what C3 Data has.  But I would say that they all suffer from the same two problems.  Their software was not built around the prevailing specifications like the AMS and CQI9, as we keep mentioning.  And secondly, they were built by people that don’t do pyrometry.  So, the user experience quickly becomes frustrating for people using the competition’s product.  Because, unless you have done this type of work, it’s really impossible to know all the limitless permutations of the spec and account for them all.  So, their software ends up running you instead of the other way around.  Another thing that is unique about C3 is that we allow the user to fully integrate with existing service providers and vendors.  For example, if you had a lab that is coming in on site to perform your calibrations, their reports will automatically funnel in to the C3 account.  And they are available in real time.  So, that’s one.  I mean we integrate with sensor vendor.  GeoCorp is one of our sensor vendors.  When you buy a thermocouple from GeoCorp, and you have a C3 Data account, your sensors will automatically get pulled into your C3 Data account.  Including all the correction factors and the math associated with the rounding and all that, so there is a lot of integration with the vendors and service providers – including data logger manufacturers.  But there are some major data logger manufacturers that integrate directly with our temperature uniformity survey software that, again, all that calibration data for those loggers technically can go into our system as well as generating temperature uniformity survey reports that are fully compliant in less than five minutes.  So, this is a big one. I think there are listeners out there who have done surveys know that a survey report can take, and it varies depending on your experience and what systems you have, but it can take anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes and even sometimes an hour just to do a report.  We can consistently offer a product that does this in less than five minutes and guarantee its compliance.  But I think our biggest competitor is really not a company, it’s the status quo.  People who are “getting by” with their in-house systems and they don’t know what else is available and they don’t realize the tremendous cost they currently are incurring doing it the way they have always done it.  So, that is probably our biggest competitor – getting past the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” type of mentality.   

Nathan didn’t want to name drop during the podcast but shortly after the interview, Nathan informed me that C3 Data signed a distributor agreement with CCPI Europe, Limited – to represent C3 Data in Europe.  CCPI will do essentially the same thing in Europe that Geocorp does here in North America.  CCPI Sensors will integrate directly with C3 Data for customers in that part of the world. 

DG: And how about when the auditor walks in.  Do most of them accept your reports?

NW:  Most auditors have accepted it.  We are trying to get the word out to a lot of the NADCAP auditors that this is a user-friendly system and that it can be trusted.  As a result of some of the feedback we have gotten from some auditors we’ve built in some, I guess, “check your math here” kind of thing — they want to know — yes, it says that the test passed because I see the number turns green instead of red but how do we know that?  And so we’ve built in some software validation tools in there for NADCAP auditors to become more comfortable by seeing the math behind the numbers.  As well as for our users.  But, yes, you are right. The most rewarding moment is the day of the NADCAP audit, you can go to the single screen where you have scheduler and tests.  You have one system. Not a filing cabinet, not an excel spreadsheet and another spreadsheet on a different file server.  It’s one system accessible anywhere on the web that you can go and have a NADCAP audit.  You can personally have a NADCAP audit remotely.  In an ideal world, that might be something that is considered by PRI someday but the beauty is, yes, it’s in one location.  You are never chasing down paper.  And the bottom line is you know that it’s all compliant – 100 percent of the time.   

So, if you are a captive or commercial heat treater looking for smart ways to reduce your compliance investment, you might want to take a look at C3 Data.  Here’s a system that could significantly reduce the time you invest in conducting the litany of compliance tests required and the time it takes to prepare those time-consuming reports after each test.  Better to let C3 take care of it.  If you’d like to contact Nathan, feel free to email me directly and I’ll put you in touch with him.  You can email me at Doug@heattreattoday.com.  C3 Data is on the web at www.C3data.com.  And you can reach out to Nathan that way as well.  

Special thanks go to Dry Coolers, Inc., for their support of Heat Treat Radio and for their sponsoring this podcast.  Dry Coolers, industrial cooling systems, made to order.  Dry Coolers is on the web at www.drycoolers.com.  

Don’t forget to visit www.heattreattoday.com frequently. We post a new heat treat industry item – either a technical article or some industry news — every weekday.  If you would like more Heat Treat Radio, simply google Heat Treat Radio.  We are the first thing that pops up.  Or, you can also subscribe to Heat Treat Radio on iTunes or Soundcloud.  This and every other episode of Heat Treat Radio is the sole property of Heat Treat Today and may not be reproduced without express written permission and appropriate attribution from Heat Treat Today.  Jonathan Lloyd of Butler, Pennsylvania, produced and mixed this episode.  I’m your host, Doug Glenn.  Thanks for listening.   

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today
Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

Heat Treat Radio #13: C3 Data Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #12: ITC Coatings

Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio, a periodic podcast where Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, discusses cutting-edge topics with industry-leading personalities. Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript. To see a complete list of other Heat Treat Radio episodes, click here.


Audio: Heat Treat Radio: ITC Coatings

In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews Greg Odenthal of ITC Coatings, a company based in Fort Worth, Texas, which manufactures and installs high-temperature, energy-efficient ceramic coatings. Increasing the efficiency of your furnace by even 5 to 10 percent would a good thing. Doug and Greg are going to introduce you to a spray-on product that increases furnace efficiency by, on average, 10 to 15 percent and sometimes as high as 25 percent. It can be applied to nearly any furnace surface and can be applied in less than a week in most cases, sometimes even within a single day.

Click the play button below to listen.


Transcript: Heat Treat Radio: ITC Coatings

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Thanks for joining us. I’m Doug Glenn, your Heat Treat Radio host and publisher of Heat Treat Today. Before we jump on the phone and call Greg Odenthal at ITC Coatings, let me encourage you to visit www.heattreattoday.com, especially if you’re a manufacturer with in-house heat treat operations. Our website targets content for heat treaters in the aerospace, automotive, medical, and energy sectors well as general manufacturing. We update the site with at least one new piece of content every weekday, and we typically publish technical content on Tuesdays, our Technical Tuesday feature.

So let’s get rolling on today’s podcast. I got on the phone and called Greg Odenthal. Greg is the director of engineering and technical applications for ITC Coatings. Let’s jump right into the phone call.

Doug Glenn (DG): So, this is Doug Glenn with Heat Treat Radio. We’re here today, on the phone, with Greg Odenthal from ITC Coatings. So, we wanted to talk about a relatively interesting, not necessarily new, but perhaps new to many captive heat treaters and many heat treaters in the industry. It has to do with helping the insulating properties of furnaces and things of that sort. So, let’s start. First thing I want to do is welcome Greg. Greg, thanks for joining us, I appreciate you being here.

Greg Odenthal (GO): Thanks, Doug. I appreciate it. It is good to be here.

DG: So, without a lot of detail at this point, because we’ll get into a little more detail as we move forward, if you could give us the thirty-second elevator pitch on the product. And maybe as you are doing it, just tell us a bit about the company: the company name, where you are located, that type of thing.

GO: Sure thing. So it is ITC Coatings. We are located in Fort Worth, Texas. I sit in my office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and we also have a business development office in Raleigh, North Carolina. So, we manufacture and install high-temperature, energy-efficient ceramic coatings. These coatings have a multitude of uses in heat treat furnaces, kilns, reheat furnaces in the steel world. And really, anybody who is looking to reduce fuel consumption, reduce factory maintenance, increase product quality, should be looking at using our products.

What is it? Water-Based Ceramic Coatings

Greg Odenthal, Director of Engineering & Technical Operations ITC – International Technical Ceramics, LLC (ITC Coatings)

DG: Right. So, it is an energy saving product. It is applied to refractories. Without giving away the secret sauce, because we know there is a secret formula, give us a sense of what we are dealing with here. Is it a castable material? Is it a wool material? Is it a spray-on material? What is it? What is it made of? How does it work?

GO: Well, it’s neither of those. It is ceramic technology, and it’s ceramic coatings. These are water-based ceramic coatings that are applied only mils thick on top of a current existing refractory. That refractory can be castable, gunite, shotcrete, ceramic fiber, fire brick, insulating fire brick, hard brick — it has a multitude of uses. Unfortunately, at this point, I cannot disclose the chemical makeup because it is proprietary. But I will tell you that there is nothing in our coatings that one wouldn’t find in any of the current refractories in use today.

DG: So you are not introducing some sort of a strange, alien substance into the furnace, necessarily. It’s just normal material but it is formulated in such a way that you can get some pretty outstanding energy efficiencies.

GO: Absolutely. We take what’s currently being used in the market and based on percentages and what we have, we make a pretty unique product.

DG: A lot of people will say, well, this is a brand new product; if we buy it, if we use it, are we going to be the guinea pigs here? Tell us a little bit. What is the history? Has it been around a long time? Is it relatively new?

GO: Our product has been around since 1980. There was a gentleman and his wife, Feriz Delkic and Alice Delkic, that invented this product. They invented it for their own use. Ferris was manufacturing kilns back in the 1980s. He wanted his kilns to be the most efficient kilns on the market. So, in order to do that, he invented a ceramic coating to apply to the inside of the kiln over top of the refractory. And, low and behold, come to find out that now his kilns are the most efficient kilns on the market. Having that technology in his pocket, he kind of ventured out and tried to persuade or get the world to start using his coatings to reduce fuel consumption, increase product quality, [along with] a host of benefits that come along with it. We can talk about it a little later. So, yes, it has been around since 1980. It’s nothing new to the market. But, like you had made mention at the beginning of the interview, it’s probably new to quite a few people because if you never heard of it or you don’t realize what’s on the market, then, yes, it could be a new product.

The Savings

DG: Right. And just so we know — I mean, we’ll mention this at the end as well — people can find out a little bit more on your website: www.itccoatings.com. We will mention that again at the end. So, Greg, realistically, what type of energy savings are we talking about? You can give us low end, extremely great high end. But realistically what’s in the middle as well? What are you seeing as far as energy savings?

GO: Depending upon the application and depending upon the condition of the refractory, we’ve seen energy savings anywhere from 7 to 10 percent all the way up to 20 to 25 percent reductions in fuel consumption. Because of the broad range, you know, if I’m going in and I’m applying this coating on a brand new refractory lining, say it’s brand new fiber lining or even a brand new brick lining – that refractory is pretty intact. Obviously, it’s new. You don’t have a lot of spalled refractory or cracks or things of that nature so your fuel consumption at that point is low to begin with. The coatings at that point on a new lining are going to protect that refractory from the harmful effects of heat and thermal shock and spalling. It will increase its life. When you get into a lining that has been around for several years and it’s got a lot of wear on it, a lot of spalling, thermal cracking shocks, things of that nature, you’ve got a lot of avenues for heat to penetrate into that lining and escape through the shell. So, obviously, your fuel consumption is much greater. There is a broad range, but like I said, it depends upon the application and current condition of the refractory.

DG: So, roughly speaking, a person that was going to use it could expect anywhere from 10 to 25 percent, 7 to 25 percent. Somewhere in that range?

GO: Yeah, I would say the average that we see currently today on installations is anywhere from 10 to 15 percent. On an average.

DG: That’s fair. And the way this works, just so we’re clear – it’s a reflective material. Is that right? I mean, essentially, is that how we are saving?

GO: Yes, yes, it is. It reflects probably about 90 percent of all the radiant energy that the burners put out.

DG: Right. And it’s most effective in the radiant spectrum, so to speak?

GO: Absolutely. When you get into the radiation, into the temperatures that most of our customers and our target audiences are operating at – when you are at 1200 degrees, 1500 degrees, the major mode of heat transfer is radiation which [is] temperature to the fourth power, that’s what we are after. We’re after re-radiating from the burners back into the furnace to capture that energy and reduce your fuel consumption. You know, you still get convection and conduction through coatings. That heat transfer still takes place, but at much lower temperatures and we aren’t really concerned about it. It’s the radiation spectrum that we’re after.

Application — DIY or Letting the Pros Handle It?

DG: So, just to kind of prep you and prep the people who are listening about what we are going to be talking about – we are going to talk in a minute about applying the product, and what does it take, dry out times, if any, and surface prep and stuff like that. But before I ask you about that, just to kind of whet our appetite here – do you have any good examples of installations, kind of case studies, that you could share, that might be of interest?

GO: We do have several listed on our website. I encourage listeners, obviously, to go to our website. We’ve had many successful applications over the years. One of the latest that we’ve just done here probably four or five months ago was McConway & Torley here in Pittsburgh in one of their austenitizing furnaces where we coated the entire ceramic fiber lining. Their major reason for using the coatings was they wanted to be able to reduce their turnaround time. And we did – by twenty minutes! Which now allows them to treat one additional load per week. It may not seem a lot but when you start applying the numbers and the savings to it, it’s pretty significant. So, one additional load per week for these guys is a significant amount of profit to their bottom line per year.

Along with that, like I said, which was one of the main reasons why they wanted to use this coating — we reduced their fuel consumption. We improved their temperature uniformity. You know, they were around plus or minus 40 degrees, we now have them down to plus or minus 25 degrees. So a big significant change there. Their refractory life is going to increase probably, and this is on an average as well, but their refractory longevity and life is going to increase three to five times. So, their maintenance on that fiber lining is going to greatly reduce. Fiber shrinks upon heat — it’s non-reversible. So you’ve got to shut the furnace down periodically and pack the joints with new fiber and continue running but the problem is the new fiber you just used to pack these joints as soon as you turn the furnace on the fiber shrinks. It’s just a constant maintenance nightmare, especially in a fiber-lined furnace. That was one of the latest that we did, but we have had numerous other applications throughout the years, specifically in the steel industry. We’ve got successful applications — ArcelorMittal, Nucor Steels, EVRAZ Rocky Mountain Steel in Colorado. And as far as heat treaters and forging houses — Finkl Steel in Chicago, Union Electric here in Pittsburgh. So we’ve got quite a laundry list of successful applications.

DG: All right, so let’s talk a little bit about application of the product. Just in a nutshell, what does it take to apply it? Is this a thermal spray? How do you apply it?

GO: It’s applied by spraying it on. It’s not thermal, thermally sprayed or applied. You know, the best way to apply it is — I tell a lot of our customers that want to do this themselves – the best way to apply it is to go to Home Depot or Lowes and buy yourself a textured drywall popper spray gun. You can get them for $70 or $80 and use that to apply it. It’s okay for heat treat furnaces that aren’t very large in size. We’ve done those that may be 32 feet long by 16 feet wide and 15 feet high — somewhere in that range. It’s okay in that size. When you move into a reheat furnace in a steel mill, there are sprayers that can be rented or purchased. They are also drywall spray guns, but they are self – contained with a 15-gallon hopper on the unit, so that the actual applicator is only holding onto a gun and not a hopper full of material. Which can get pretty heavy over time.

DG: Right. So it’s basically as simple as painting your house with a spray gun.

GO: Yeah, pretty much. You know some people will ask me, well I’ve got a paint sprayer here, can I use that? And the answer to that is “No.” Paint sprayers have filters and screens in them, and the problem is you’re going to filter out and screen out all of the ceramics that are in it, so, really all you’d be applying is the water that it’s mixed with.

DG: Okay, okay. So I assume you recommend that your team, your crew, applies it. It can be done by the homeowner, so to speak — the furnace owner — but probably better if your guys apply it?

GO: I would say initially, “Yes.” We always want to come in and do the first one, two, three applications for a customer. And during those applications, if they want to learn, they are more than welcome to sit there with us while we mix and apply so that they could get a good general knowledge and hands-on training at the time, to be able to move forward and apply it themselves. We do have some certified product installers around the country: NorHeat Treatment, Inc, out of Canada, Thermal Coating Solutions here in Pittsburgh. We do have some other people down south that do it for us. We have a gentleman over in Chicago that handles more or less our cement world and energy world, but, yeah, so, it can be applied by the customer but we definitely recommend ITC do the first one or two installs. Then you can learn the ropes.

Prep, Downtime, Restart

DG: Right. Now, how about surface preparation? So, I’m a, I’m a manufacturer, I’ve got a furnace in-house. It is up and running 24/7/365. I don’t want it to be down long. How much surface prep do I have to do if I take this thing out of service? How long is it out, and what do I need to do to get the surface ready, and how long, in fact, does installation and or any dry-out process take?

GO: Well, again, I’ve been in some furnaces that are in really, really bad shape. So, surface prep, on a ceramic fiber-lined furnace — depending on how hard you run it, the fiber starts to devitrify and it gets the black crusty layer over that fiber which is really no good anymore. It’s just a glassy phase that has no insulating value to you whatsoever. So, that needs to be removed. It’s depending on the size of the furnace, depending on the size of the crew, but most installations that I have been involved with – three to four days at the most. And that can even apply to a large pusher type reheat furnace in a steel mill. You know, day one would be surface prep, clean up the refractory if it needs it. Days two, three, and four would be applying the coatings. And then after that, we are done. We get out of the way. If you’ve got a brand new furnace, we can walk in, open the door, and we can have that sprayed in eight to ten hours. You can have that done in one day. Like I said, application really depends on the condition of the refractory.

DG: Right. And as far as dry out, I mean a lot of times with a refractory installation, there’s dry out times, that type of stuff. What are we looking at? Does this stuff have to be dried out? Do we need to go low heat for quite a while or does it dry like paint?

GO: Once it’s applied, the recommendation is to let it dry for 24 hours. And, then, when you start the furnace, I say, 100 degrees an hour, when you get to about 250 or 300, I like to hold it there, maybe for an hour, just to start to drive that mechanical water out of it. And then after that, 100 degrees an hour to operating temperature because then you are going to start forming the chemical bond and drive off the chemical water. You are going to sinter that coating. And you have to remember, these are only mils thick, so it’s not like conventional refractories where you’ve got 8, 9, 10 inches, and you’ve got to hold per hour, per inch thickness at 250, and then 600 and then 9 . . . You know there’s no holds just due to the thinness of the application.

The Fine Print

DG: Okay, so once we put the ITC coating on, and we’re getting ready to fire up the furnace, do we have any concerns about any volatiles, any type of dangerous chemicals going to be off-gassing during that process or during the life of the product?

GO: Absolutely not. The coatings contain no harmful VOCs. So there is no off-gassing, and they’re not harmful to you or the environment. So, no, no volatiles.

DG: So, the other question that jumps to my mind is – you know every material has a different thermal coefficient of expansion when it heats up. It grows or shrinks in a different way. So, you are applying this mils-thin coating/surface over — you can put it over brick, you can put it over fiber. When they heat up, grow and expand and contract differently. Do we have issues here with this coating here cracking/spalling, that type of thing, because of the base material?

GO: No, we do not. The way the coatings are designed, the binder system is designed to move with the dimensional change of the substrate. When you’re at ambient temperature, they are very hard — like a coffee cup if you think about ceramics. But when you get into the 2200 degree/2300 degree range, you know everything at that point starts to soften up a bit – things grow and move. The binder system in the coatings allows the coatings to move with the dimensional change of the substrate. So, no, we do not really have any issues with expansion. And that holds true for metal as well. We’ve got a coating that is specifically designed to coat metal parts and increase the life of metal parts due to high-temperature oxidation of the metal.

DG: Okay. And how about, along the same line, I’m thinking that if there is any type of cracking at all — which sounds like there is not — but in some of these furnaces, especially if we’ve got high-velocity air flow inside of let’s say, for example, some sort of an annealing furnace that just requires high convective heat, a lot of airflow, a lot of velocity. Do we have any concerns about wind erosion so to speak?

GO: No, not necessarily. You know, if you’ve got high velocity, some furnaces do have a fiber lining in them with some velocity, and it tends to sometimes tear the fiber off, but once the coatings are applied, you’re encapsulating that fiber. And again, like I said, it’s got a hard shell to it. So, no, any velocity we are not really too concerned about velocity.

DG: It wouldn’t be an issue. Very briefly then, let’s just talk about what products are offered. I was looking through the website, [and it] looks like you’ve got three new install products if you will, and two fix it products. Can you just kind of run us down through those — what ‘s the difference between them, all that good stuff?

The Line-Up

GO: Sure, sure. So, you are right. We’ve got five products that we offer. Our workhorse product that can go over top of any kind of refractory – it’s very versatile high-temperature coating and it’s proven to achieve outstanding energy savings and refractory protection. That is our ITC100HT. Next is the ITC296A; that is a high purity top coat. It is resistant to salts, acidics – anywhere you have a very strange atmosphere or bad products of combustion. Some of our customers burn oil or they burn coke oven gas which develops vanadium and that vanadium starts to attack the refractory linings. So, in that instance, I would apply the 296A over top of the ITC100 to prevent any additional chemical attack to the 100HT. After that, we have ITC213 which is our coating for metals. It is specifically formulated for metal surfaces. And that can go over top of carbon steel, stainless steels, alloys, you know any type of metal surface. And what it does is, we’re preventing the erosion of that metal due to oxidation at high temperatures. There is a surface prep to the metal. Most metal we are going to put it over, unless it is brand new, and even brand new metal a lot of times you’ll have oils or machine grease from manufacturing. That all needs to be removed and the best way to do that is sandblast. Sandblast the part, put a very nice profile on it, and then apply the coatings.

DG: I see this also can be applied on graphite.

GO: You know, it can, depending upon how much graphite is actually in the product. On mag-carbon brick, we have a very hard time applying it do to the high percentage of graphite in the mag carbon brick. We can coat electrodes, so, it just depends on the percentage of graphite.

DG: Okay. So that’s 213?

GO: That’s 213. And then, after that, we have two repair products that are trowelable-consistency materials. And these are used, ITC200EZ and ITC148, [for] heavy-duty ceramic repairs. The 200 EZ is used mostly in the ceramics and pottery world. It’s a durable compound used to repair broken, chipped, cracked brick, castable fiber material – things of that nature. ITC148 heavy duty; you’ll find this in use where we’ve got a lot of abrasion — heavy industry like the steel mills. Guys will repair ladle lip rings. They’ll repair deltas sometimes for an EAF furnace. It’s very strong, And it’s got an abrasion resistant compound for repairing areas that are exposed to harsh environments and mechanical abuse. You know, like I said — ton issues, ladles, door jams on furnaces — things of that nature.

DG: Okay. So those are the two repair products. And I do see from looking at your website right now that you do actually have install kits and things of that sort so that you can buy the product and you can also buy some of the equipment necessary for installing.

GO: Yes, we do. Those kits, again, are geared toward the hobbyists, the smaller ceramics guys. You know when you get into the manufacturing world, you are going to want a much bigger, heavy-duty sprayer. But, we do. We do offer kits to the smaller hobbyists and ceramic people.

DG: It might be worth saying that for some heat treaters who want to get started, who want to test this out on one of their smaller box furnaces, one of these kits may be a good way to start. Some of the bigger furnaces would be worth doing, too.

Okay, wrapping up here just shortly, any temperature range that this is not good in? I think you mentioned it’s okay for those lower temperature ranges, but it starts getting really effective when you are in the radiant heat spectrum. Any heat too high?

GO: No, not really that I have come across. You know the sweet spot on our bat is anywhere from 1600/1700 anywhere upwards of 3600/3800. You get into the medical waste incineration at those temperatures. You know, back in the day when Feriz was the original inventor, when he was out pushing his product, there had been testing in some product applications on the launchpad at NASA. So, I’m not exactly sure what the exit velocity and temperature of the combustion coming out of the rocket is, but I’m sure it’s pretty high and a pretty high velocity. He coated some of the process piping on the launch pad. Not that I have run into any temperatures that are too high for us. Again, the sweet spot on our bat, anywhere from 1600 to 3600s is not an issue.

DG: Well, safe to say, if our heat treaters are experiencing the temperatures and velocities of a NASA launchpad, we might want to talk to them about their process a little bit.

GO: I would think they would have a bigger problem than refractories.

DG: Yeah, exactly. Alright, super, so the last couple things I see that I wanted to mention here are, first off, these materials, most of them you can buy in gallons, or even pint sizes. I guess a lot of them come in different sizes, correct?

GO: We package it in pint sizes for the smaller hobbyist and smaller home kiln heat treater and knife makers, and then for when you get into the industry, we’ve got it in gallon containers and five-gallon containers.

DG: Okay, super. And then I also noticed, very nice to see, by the way, let me compliment you on this, I see your website is e-commerce friendly. So, people can actually go on and buy right online, I assume.

GO: You can buy right off our website. All of the information is listed there. You can buy with a credit card, or you can even go to the website.We do have what is listed as office@ITCCoatings if you are using a PO. You can go to that email and submit a PO for materials. So there are several ways to buy the product.

DG: Okay, so if you want to send an email, office@ITCcoatings.com will also get you there. Very good. How about, just as a reminder, website to find out more is www.itccoatings.com. With an S. You could take a look there. Also, Heat Treat Today will have an article on our site as well at www.heattreattoday.com. Be glad to connect you up with Greg. Well, if anybody has any questions and you would like to get a hold of Greg directly, just email me at doug@heattreattoday.com. Be glad to put you in touch with Greg if you have more questions. So, Greg, thanks a lot for the time. I appreciate it. If there is anything you want to add before we sign off?

GO: No, I think we covered quite a bit today. I appreciate you having me. Thank you very much. It was enjoyable.


So if you’re looking for a way to increase the thermal efficiency of your furnace, maybe as much as 10 to 15 percent, why not give Greg a call? Again, drop me an email at doug@heattreattoday.com if you’d like to get in touch with Greg.

You can listen to other Heat Treat Radio podcasts by doing one of three things. You can go to The Google and search for Heat Treat Radio, we’re the first thing that pops up. Or, you can go to www.heattreattoday.com and click on Heat Treat Radio under the Resources Tab. OR, you can go to iTunes or SoundCloud and search for us there.

If you have a topic you’d like to see featured on Heat Treat Radio, please drop me an email.

Heat Treat Radio is the sole property of Heat Treat Today and may not be reproduced without specific, written approval and appropriate attribution.

This issue of Heat Treat Radio was mixed and produced by Jonathan Lloyd, Butler, Pennsylvania.

I’m your host, Doug Glenn. Thanks for listening.

 

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today
Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

Heat Treat Radio #12: ITC Coatings Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #11: Laser Heat Treating with Laser Hard

Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio, a periodic podcast where Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, discusses cutting-edge topics with industry-leading personalities. Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript. To see a complete list of other Heat Treat Radio episodes, click here.


Audio: Heat Treat Radio: Laser Heat Treating with Laser Hard

In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews two families who have been at their manufacturing game for multiple generations. Not long ago they joined forces to establish a new company — Laser Hard, Inc. — and to introduce one of the most cutting edge-heat treat technologies around today: laser heat treating. For many of you who have difficult-to-heat treat parts, whether it’s because of blind holes, or the fact that the part is too big to move, or perhaps you’d like to significantly reduce, if not eliminate, post-heat treat hard machining, you’re going to find today’s Heat Treat Radio episode on laser heat treating especially interesting.

Click the play button below to listen.


Transcript: Heat Treat Radio: Laser Heat Treating with Laser Hard

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Click the image to connect to Heat Treat Radio

In this episode of Heat Treat Radio, let’s talk about one of the most cutting-edge heat treat technologies around today — laser heat treating.

Thanks for joining us. My name is Doug Glenn and I’m your Heat Treat Radio host and publisher of Heat Treat Today. You can find us on the web at www.heattreattoday.com or simply by Googling Heat Treat Radio. And here’s something new, Heat Treat Radio is now on iTunes! On the website, we update our heat treat content daily, and if you’re a manufacturer with an in-house heat treat department, you’re going to love our site.

Although it sounds Star Treky, laser heat treating is a pretty well-established technology, especially in Europe, but not so much in the United States. The applications are intriguing to say the least – as is the way it is being introduced into the United States – and as are the two families introducing it. One family – long time heat treaters. The other family – long time laser welders and laser cladders. Both minding their own businesses – literally – both thinking about ways to better serve their customers. These two businessmen were from the same small town in Pennsylvania, and they paired up to create a new company called Laser Hard.

And that’s where our story begins.

Introducing Doug Peters of Peters’ Heat Treating and Blair Learn of Phoenix Laser Solutions

Doug Glenn (DG): First, let me introduce you to the two patriarchs: Doug Peters of Peters’ Heat Treating, and Blair Learn of Phoenix Laser Solutions.

Both Doug and Blair are seasoned veterans in their respective industries, and both have children involved in their family businesses in Meadville, Pennsylvania – a mid-sized city about 40 minutes south of Lake Erie and 20 miles from the Ohio state border. These two patriarchs have known each other for years – primarily because Phoenix Laser had been sending heat treating to Peters’ Heat Treating.

Doug Peters, Peters’ Heat Treating Inc.

Peters’ Heat Treating started in 1979, and here’s Doug Peters with a short history of Peters’ Heat Treating.

Doug Peters (DP): We basically started because there was a need in the area for a commercial heat treater. I heard about it from clients of mine. I was in the insurance business and I finally got tired of listening to everybody saying that the place needed a good heat treater so we started one. That expanded to Erie in ’82, then opened the production plant on 13 acres up here in 2013.

Doug and his wife Jackie have three kids involved in their business: Christopher, who helps with IT and other special projects at the heat treat company, and then husband and wife team Diana Peters Wilkosz and her husband Andy Wilkosz who are both heavily involved in Laser Hard as well as the heat treat company.

The other patriarch in this picture is Blair Learn, father of three boys, Chris, Dave, and Mike, all of whom are owners of Phoenix Laser Solutions. Here’s Blair with a brief history of his family business.

Blair Learn, Phoenix Laser Solutions

Blair Learn (BL): So we started here in 2008, but we’ve been laser welding for 25 years. We used to have a design and build plastic injection mold hut. We would build high cavitation molds, and we needed a laser there to fix the day-to-day bumps and dings — you know, DCRs and stuff.

Besides the laser heat treating technology, which we’ll get to in just a minute, the thing that excites these two seasoned entrepreneurs is seeing their 20- and 30-something kids run with a new business. Doug Peters says it well.

DP: I think one of the things that’s most interesting to me is that the two patriarchs have stepped back and this company truly belongs to our sons and daughters.

DG: And who are these sons and daughters? Well, there are more than we have time to put in this podcast, but let me introduce them all to you now and then we’ll hear from just two of them.

Introducing Chris Learn and Andy Wilkosz of LaserHard, Inc.

Laser Hard, Inc:: Andy Wilkosz, Diana Wilkosz, Chris Learn, David Learn

On the Peters’ Heat Treating side of the business is, as I mentioned before, Diana Wilkosz, maiden name, Peters. Diana is the marketing brains behind Laser Hard and oversees marketing, HR, and finance for Peters’ Heat Treating. This is a good time to mention that Laser Hard can be found on the web at www.laserhard.com, a website undoubtedly put together by Diana and her team.

We’ll hear from Diana’s husband, Andy Wilkosz, in just a few minutes.

From the Phoenix Laser Solutions side of the business is two of the three brothers, Chris and Dave Learn. Dave is treasurer and Chris is president. Both of the patriarchs, Doug Peters and Blair Learn, are heavily involved in sales and oversight of the new company.

Now, let’s hear from Chris Learn.

Chris Learn (CL): Yeah, my name is Chris Learn. I’m the owner of Phoenix Laser. And I pretty much oversee the shop floor. Mainly on the laser welding side.

DG: And now, as promised, let’s hear from the spokesperson from the Peters’ Heat Treating side of the business – Andy Wilkosz.

Andy Wilkosz (AW): I’m Andy Wilkosz, vice president of Laser Hard. I also work for Peters’ Heat Treat.

DG: So these are the players. But what about the technology – laser heat treating. Pretty fascinating stuff. Listen as we go back to Andy as he discusses cutting-edge robotics and real-time, feedback-loop pyrometry that makes this laser heat treating system so much different AND BETTER than other laser heat treating systems.

AW: So, I was part of the team that worked on initial startup and all the initial projects associated with the robot and the laser system. Some of the things that set it apart from the traditional lasers and systems that are out in the marketplace now is this has the Fonhoffer Control System so there is onboard optical pyrometry which is a very strong tool for this. A traditional laser is almost like a guess-and-check type of method where you adjust the wattage, see if you achieved the hardness, and in this system, we have the optical pyrometry that has a feedback loop that reads the temperature of the part and then it can control which is really important as a part’s geometry changes. We are going to be able to have better repeatability and control for our customers’ parts. Now, obviously it’s always best if you get one set up part but if the customer just has one part, we are much more likely to get it right and not hurt their part with some of the hazards that could be associated with laser-like melting.

DG: Doug Peters expounded as well on some of the advantages of the Laser Hard heat treating system.

DP: You can locally heat treat parting lines. You can locally heat treat shear areas in a cut off die. You can, instead of having to heat treat the whole part — basically the strength, Doug, is that you can finish a part, we can locally heat treat and then you can put it to work. So the precise heat of a laser enables us to not have to temper everything. In Europe, as they employ this technology, they don’t temper much, if anything because they don’t need to, because of the way this works. Right now I can tell you that the main strength I see in this thing is the precise placement of the treatment, whether it be cladding or heat treating, and the areas that we can direct the beam that you cannot get at with any other technology or method of heating. So, in other words, if you have a blind hole that is two inches deep, I can put a beam into the bottom of the hole and I can harden just the bottom of the hole, and you can’t do that with induction or flame. And with traditional heat treating you are going to have the hard finish cost associated with the distortion as part of the base heat treating cycle.

DG: With laser, you can get in the hole, do the job, and be done with no additional post treatments.

DP: Exactly. And no post hard finish time either — which is huge. The majority of time in building a tool is generally in hard finish time.

DG: And finally, Chris Learn also had something to say about the advantages and application of laser hardening. Chris Learn…

CL: It’s heavily being used in the automotive industry for very large plastic injection tools. So they got this very large plastic injection cavity or core and they are just locally heat treating the parting line and the shut offs. Where before they would have to buy a more expensive material and you know, rough machine it, then heat treat the entire huge block and then finish machine it, you know, with hard milling or eem processes that are very expensive, where now they can just buy a cheaper material, finish machine it and then laser harden just the part you need.

Portability

One of the other benefits of this new laser heat treating service being offered by Laser Hard is its portability.

One of the other benefits of this new laser heat treating service being offered by Laser Hard is its portability. Andy Wilkosz commented on the unit’s portability and its potential application in the gear market.

AW: Another powerful aspect of this is we are hoping to really serve the gear market as well. Where in traditional heat treating, what you run is going to be limited on your furnace size. With this robot having the ability to move around — it’s on tank treads — and the range that it can articulate to, you are only limited by what you can get to. So we have the ability to do very, very large parts.

DG: I don’t know if you caught what Andy said. He said that the laser heat treating unit was on “tank treads.” Those tank treads along with a robotic laser heat treating or cladding arm allow the unit to move on-site to where the part is located and once there to move around the part as needed to do whatever process needs done whether it be heat treating or cladding.

As we left the Laser Hard offices and went into the shop to see the unit in action, I asked Chris Learn about the unit’s mobility as well – the ability to take that machine on-site.

CL: So I think the biggest reason for taking this piece of equipment mobile is if the workpiece is too large to transport. Or if it’s too expensive and too risky to transport. So, it’s a very high-cost situation that instead of taking the part here and having us manipulate it here at our shop, even though we have a ten-ton crane, some parts that we deal with are twenty tons, thirty tons. So, it’s a size restriction. Sometimes it’s going to make sense to take this on site.

DG: I next asked Andy to give us a brief explanation of how the unit works. Here’s Andy, and again, please pardon the background noise from the laser welding shop.

AW: Right now, we have a part chucked up in the rotary axis and with the laser scan technology that we have on the laser, it interfaces with the software on the computer and what Mason can do is, we’ll rotate the part, as he rotates the part, it requires image information through the scan and it will actually build a 3D model of the part and its geometry on the computer. Then once we have that on the computer, we can use the computer to draw and program the path of the heat treat or the laser hardening pattern – whether it be a spot or in this case it’s a round bar and what we are going to do is we are going to traverse the bar in a spiral candy cane/barber pole pattern so that you can harden the entire surface. The beam size is about, the max width is, we’ll say 850,000, it’s a little bit more than that but we’ll use round numbers. So if you want to harden an area larger than that, what you end up doing is making multiple overlapping passes.

DG: To actually see the equipment in action, you’ll have to link over to Heat Treat Today’s website and search for Laser Hard. We’ll have an article there with photos of the players and a brief video of the laser heat treating system in action.

Click below or here to view a video of the equipment in action.


Here’s what’s important to remember:

  • This laser heat treating and cladding system has a real-time feedback loop that makes it possible to not guess at whether the heat treating process being run is being run correctly.
  • This laser heat treating and cladding system is portable and can go on-site to perform any process needed.
  • For large parts or for specialty parts where shipping is problematic, this laser heat treating system may be just the ticket you’ve been looking for.

The young team at Laser Hard, backed by the two industry veterans, are bringing an innovative new heat treating technology to the United States.

If you’re interested in knowing more about Laser Hard and the services they provide, feel free to visit their website at www.laserhard.com or contact me directly and I’ll put you in touch with one of the key players. More information, including photos of the Laser Hard team and the equipment, as well as a short video of the equipment in use, can be seen by visiting Heat Treat Today’s website and searching for Laser Hard. 


Stop back at Heat Treat Today’s site frequently. We update the site daily with information pertinent to heat treaters with in-house heat treating departments, especially those in the aerospace, automotive, medical, and energy sectors, as well as general manufacturing.

If you’d like to hear more Heat Treat Radio, you can do that in one of three ways:

  • You can Google “heat treat radio” – we’re the first thing that pops up,
  • You can visit www.heattreattoday.com and find “Heat Treat Radio” under the Resources tab,
  • Or, as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, you can find “Heat Treat Radio” on iTunes or on SoundCloud.

If you have a specific topic you’d like covered on Heat Treat Radio, please feel free to contact me directly with your suggestion. My email is doug@heattreattoday.com.

Heat Treat Radio podcasts are the sole property of Heat Treat Today and cannot be reproduced without permission and appropriate attribution.

This episode of Heat Treat Radio was produced and mixed by Jonathan Lloyd, Butler, Pennsylvania.

My name is Doug Glenn. Thanks for joining us.

 

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today
Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

Heat Treat Radio #11: Laser Heat Treating with Laser Hard Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #11: Laser Heat Treating with Laser Hard

Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio, a periodic podcast where Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, discusses cutting-edge topics with industry-leading personalities. Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript. To see a complete list of other Heat Treat Radio episodes, click here.


Audio: Heat Treat Radio: Laser Heat Treating with Laser Hard

In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews two families who have been at their manufacturing game for multiple generations. Not long ago they joined forces to establish a new company — Laser Hard, Inc. — and to introduce one of the most cutting edge-heat treat technologies around today: laser heat treating. For many of you who have difficult-to-heat treat parts, whether it’s because of blind holes, or the fact that the part is too big to move, or perhaps you’d like to significantly reduce, if not eliminate, post-heat treat hard machining, you’re going to find today’s Heat Treat Radio episode on laser heat treating especially interesting.

Click The Play Button Below To Listen.


Transcript: Heat Treat Radio: Laser Heat Treating with Laser Hard

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Click the image to connect to Heat Treat Radio

In this episode of Heat Treat Radio, let’s talk about one of the most cutting-edge heat treat technologies around today — laser heat treating.

Thanks for joining us. My name is Doug Glenn and I’m your Heat Treat Radio host and publisher of Heat Treat Today. You can find us on the web at www.heattreattoday.com or simply by Googling Heat Treat Radio. And here’s something new, Heat Treat Radio is now on iTunes! On the website, we update our heat treat content daily, and if you’re a manufacturer with an in-house heat treat department, you’re going to love our site.

Although it sounds Star Treky, laser heat treating is a pretty well-established technology, especially in Europe, but not so much in the United States. The applications are intriguing to say the least – as is the way it is being introduced into the United States – and as are the two families introducing it. One family – long time heat treaters. The other family – long time laser welders and laser cladders. Both minding their own businesses – literally – both thinking about ways to better serve their customers. These two businessmen were from the same small town in Pennsylvania, and they paired up to create a new company called Laser Hard.

And that’s where our story begins.

Introducing Doug Peters Of Peters’ Heat Treating And Blair Learn Of Phoenix Laser Solutions

Doug Glenn (DG): First, let me introduce you to the two patriarchs: Doug Peters of Peters’ Heat Treating, and Blair Learn of Phoenix Laser Solutions.

Both Doug and Blair are seasoned veterans in their respective industries, and both have children involved in their family businesses in Meadville, Pennsylvania – a mid-sized city about 40 minutes south of Lake Erie and 20 miles from the Ohio state border. These two patriarchs have known each other for years – primarily because Phoenix Laser had been sending heat treating to Peters’ Heat Treating.

Doug Peters, Peters’ Heat Treating Inc.

Peters’ Heat Treating started in 1979, and here’s Doug Peters with a short history of Peters’ Heat Treating.

Doug Peters (DP): We basically started because there was a need in the area for a commercial heat treater. I heard about it from clients of mine. I was in the insurance business and I finally got tired of listening to everybody saying that the place needed a good heat treater so we started one. That expanded to Erie in ’82, then opened the production plant on 13 acres up here in 2013.

Doug and his wife Jackie have three kids involved in their business: Christopher, who helps with IT and other special projects at the heat treat company, and then husband and wife team Diana Peters Wilkosz and her husband Andy Wilkosz who are both heavily involved in Laser Hard as well as the heat treat company.

The other patriarch in this picture is Blair Learn, father of three boys, Chris, Dave, and Mike, all of whom are owners of Phoenix Laser Solutions. Here’s Blair with a brief history of his family business.

Blair Learn, Phoenix Laser Solutions

Blair Learn (BL): So we started here in 2008, but we’ve been laser welding for 25 years. We used to have a design and build plastic injection mold hut. We would build high cavitation molds, and we needed a laser there to fix the day-to-day bumps and dings — you know, DCRs and stuff.

Besides the laser heat treating technology, which we’ll get to in just a minute, the thing that excites these two seasoned entrepreneurs is seeing their 20- and 30-something kids run with a new business. Doug Peters says it well.

DP: I think one of the things that’s most interesting to me is that the two patriarchs have stepped back and this company truly belongs to our sons and daughters.

DG: And who are these sons and daughters? Well, there are more than we have time to put in this podcast, but let me introduce them all to you now and then we’ll hear from just two of them.

Introducing Chris Learn And Andy Wilkosz Of LaserHard, Inc.

Laser Hard, Inc:: Andy Wilkosz, Diana Wilkosz, Chris Learn, David Learn

On the Peters’ Heat Treating side of the business is, as I mentioned before, Diana Wilkosz, maiden name, Peters. Diana is the marketing brains behind Laser Hard and oversees marketing, HR, and finance for Peters’ Heat Treating. This is a good time to mention that Laser Hard can be found on the web at www.laserhard.com, a website undoubtedly put together by Diana and her team.

We’ll hear from Diana’s husband, Andy Wilkosz, in just a few minutes.

From the Phoenix Laser Solutions side of the business is two of the three brothers, Chris and Dave Learn. Dave is treasurer and Chris is president. Both of the patriarchs, Doug Peters and Blair Learnare heavily involved in sales and oversight of the new company.

Now, let’s hear from Chris Learn.

Chris Learn (CL): Yeah, my name is Chris Learn. I’m the owner of Phoenix Laser. And I pretty much oversee the shop floor. Mainly on the laser welding side.

DG: And now, as promised, let’s hear from the spokesperson from the Peters’ Heat Treating side of the business – Andy Wilkosz.

Andy Wilkosz (AW): I’m Andy Wilkosz, vice president of Laser Hard. I also work for Peters’ Heat Treat.

DG: So these are the players. But what about the technology – laser heat treating. Pretty fascinating stuff. Listen as we go back to Andy as he discusses cutting-edge robotics and real-time, feedback-loop pyrometry that makes this laser heat treating system so much different AND BETTER than other laser heat treating systems.

AW: So, I was part of the team that worked on initial startup and all the initial projects associated with the robot and the laser system. Some of the things that set it apart from the traditional lasers and systems that are out in the marketplace now is this has the Fonhoffer Control System so there is onboard optical pyrometry which is a very strong tool for this. A traditional laser is almost like a guess-and-check type of method where you adjust the wattage, see if you achieved the hardness, and in this system, we have the optical pyrometry that has a feedback loop that reads the temperature of the part and then it can control which is really important as a part’s geometry changes. We are going to be able to have better repeatability and control for our customers’ parts. Now, obviously it’s always best if you get one set up part but if the customer just has one part, we are much more likely to get it right and not hurt their part with some of the hazards that could be associated with laser-like melting.

DG: Doug Peters expounded as well on some of the advantages of the Laser Hard heat treating system.

DP: You can locally heat treat parting lines. You can locally heat treat shear areas in a cut off die. You can, instead of having to heat treat the whole part — basically the strength, Doug, is that you can finish a part, we can locally heat treat and then you can put it to work. So the precise heat of a laser enables us to not have to temper everything. In Europe, as they employ this technology, they don’t temper much, if anything because they don’t need to, because of the way this works. Right now I can tell you that the main strength I see in this thing is the precise placement of the treatment, whether it be cladding or heat treating, and the areas that we can direct the beam that you cannot get at with any other technology or method of heating. So, in other words, if you have a blind hole that is two inches deep, I can put a beam into the bottom of the hole and I can harden just the bottom of the hole, and you can’t do that with induction or flame. And with traditional heat treating you are going to have the hard finish cost associated with the distortion as part of the base heat treating cycle.

DG: With laser, you can get in the hole, do the job, and be done with no additional post treatments.

DP: Exactly. And no post hard finish time either — which is huge. The majority of time in building a tool is generally in hard finish time.

DG: And finally, Chris Learn also had something to say about the advantages and application of laser hardening. Chris Learn…

CL: It’s heavily being used in the automotive industry for very large plastic injection tools. So they got this very large plastic injection cavity or core and they are just locally heat treating the parting line and the shut offs. Where before they would have to buy a more expensive material and you know, rough machine it, then heat treat the entire huge block and then finish machine it, you know, with hard milling or eem processes that are very expensive, where now they can just buy a cheaper material, finish machine it and then laser harden just the part you need.

Portability

One of the other benefits of this new laser heat treating service being offered by Laser Hard is its portability.

One of the other benefits of this new laser heat treating service being offered by Laser Hard is its portability. Andy Wilkosz commented on the unit’s portability and its potential application in the gear market.

AW: Another powerful aspect of this is we are hoping to really serve the gear market as well. Where in traditional heat treating, what you run is going to be limited on your furnace size. With this robot having the ability to move around — it’s on tank treads — and the range that it can articulate to, you are only limited by what you can get to. So we have the ability to do very, very large parts.

DG: I don’t know if you caught what Andy said. He said that the laser heat treating unit was on “tank treads.” Those tank treads along with a robotic laser heat treating or cladding arm allow the unit to move on-site to where the part is located and once there to move around the part as needed to do whatever process needs done whether it be heat treating or cladding.

As we left the Laser Hard offices and went into the shop to see the unit in action, I asked Chris Learn about the unit’s mobility as well – the ability to take that machine on-site.

CL: So I think the biggest reason for taking this piece of equipment mobile is if the workpiece is too large to transport. Or if it’s too expensive and too risky to transport. So, it’s a very high-cost situation that instead of taking the part here and having us manipulate it here at our shop, even though we have a ten-ton crane, some parts that we deal with are twenty tons, thirty tons. So, it’s a size restriction. Sometimes it’s going to make sense to take this on site.

DG: I next asked Andy to give us a brief explanation of how the unit works. Here’s Andy, and again, please pardon the background noise from the laser welding shop.

AW: Right now, we have a part chucked up in the rotary axis and with the laser scan technology that we have on the laser, it interfaces with the software on the computer and what Mason can do is, we’ll rotate the part, as he rotates the part, it requires image information through the scan and it will actually build a 3D model of the part and its geometry on the computer. Then once we have that on the computer, we can use the computer to draw and program the path of the heat treat or the laser hardening pattern – whether it be a spot or in this case it’s a round bar and what we are going to do is we are going to traverse the bar in a spiral candy cane/barber pole pattern so that you can harden the entire surface. The beam size is about, the max width is, we’ll say 850,000, it’s a little bit more than that but we’ll use round numbers. So if you want to harden an area larger than that, what you end up doing is making multiple overlapping passes.

DG: To actually see the equipment in action, you’ll have to link over to Heat Treat Today’s website and search for Laser Hard. We’ll have an article there with photos of the players and a brief video of the laser heat treating system in action.

Click below or here to view a video of the equipment in action.


Here’s What’s Important To Remember:

  • This laser heat treating and cladding system has a real-time feedback loop that makes it possible to not guess at whether the heat treating process being run is being run correctly.
  • This laser heat treating and cladding system is portable and can go on-site to perform any process needed.
  • For large parts or for specialty parts where shipping is problematic, this laser heat treating system may be just the ticket you’ve been looking for.

The young team at Laser Hard, backed by the two industry veterans, are bringing an innovative new heat treating technology to the United States.

If you’re interested in knowing more about Laser Hard and the services they provide, feel free to visit their website at www.laserhard.com or contact me directly and I’ll put you in touch with one of the key players. More information, including photos of the Laser Hard team and the equipment, as well as a short video of the equipment in use, can be seen by visiting Heat Treat Today’s website and searching for Laser Hard. 


Stop back at Heat Treat Today’s site frequently. We update the site daily with information pertinent to heat treaters with in-house heat treating departments, especially those in the aerospace, automotive, medical, and energy sectors, as well as general manufacturing.

If you’d like to hear more Heat Treat Radio, you can do that in one of three ways:

  • You can Google “heat treat radio” – we’re the first thing that pops up,
  • You can visit www.heattreattoday.com and find “Heat Treat Radio” under the Resources tab,
  • Or, as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, you can find “Heat Treat Radio” on iTunes or on SoundCloud.

If you have a specific topic you’d like covered on Heat Treat Radio, please feel free to contact me directly with your suggestion. My email is doug@heattreattoday.com.

Heat Treat Radio podcasts are the sole property of Heat Treat Today and cannot be reproduced without permission and appropriate attribution.

This episode of Heat Treat Radio was produced and mixed by Jonathan Lloyd, Butler, Pennsylvania.

My name is Doug Glenn. Thanks for joining us.

 

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today
Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

Heat Treat Radio #11: Laser Heat Treating with Laser Hard Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #10: John Vanas on SX Oil Lifters

Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio, a periodic podcast where Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, discusses cutting-edge topics with industry-leading personalities. Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript. To see a complete list of other Heat Treat Radio episodes, click here.


Audio: John Vanas on SX Oil Lifters

In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, tours Euclid Heat Treating Company with owner John Vanas and discusses a nano-technology parts washing solution.

Click the play button below to listen.


Transcript: John Vanas on SX Oil Lifters

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

If you’re a manufacturer and you use parts washers to remove oil residue from metal parts as part of your manufacturing process, or if you’re a commercial heat treater who washes parts, today’s Heat Treat Radio episode should be especially interesting to you. Why? If you thought there was nothing new in the parts washing arena, you’ll be shocked at what you’ll learn today. Let me whet your appetite. What if I told you there is a parts washing additive out there where you only had to add .3 ounces — that’s right, .3 ounces — to every gallon of wash water? And what if I told you that you could run that solution for 3 to 4 months without adding any chemicals? And what would you say if I told you that the oil skimmed off of your wash bath would have a lower water content than anything that you’re currently using? And what would you say if I told you your maintenance team would never have to check the concentrations of your wash water again? Not enough? Okay, let me give you one more. What if I told you that when you were done with the bath, you could just dump it down the drain?
Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, buckle up, because Heat Treat Today is going to take you where no heat treat washing system has ever gone before.

For today’s episode of Heat Treat Radio, your host, that’s me, Doug Glenn (I’m also the publisher of Heat Treat Today, which you can find on the web at www.heattreattoday.com), took a road trip to Euclid, Ohio, to visit with a current user of the wonder wash additive I just described to you. It was a rainy day, so any raindrop noises you hear are, in fact, raindrops.

John Vanas (JV): This is our rotary retort building.

Doug Glenn (DG): Ok, great.

JV: And this is Euclid Heat Treating Company. I am John Vanas. It was established in 1946 by my father. So we have been around for 72 years.

DG: 72?

JV: 72 years. I have been here 46 years.

DG: And it is a family business, right?

JV: Yes, a family business. I have got three kids working here and we are probably the most diverse commercial heat treater in this area. We do a lot of different things: induction, rotary retort, batch, pit, nitriding, ferritic nitrocarburizing, and intensive quenching. We have got quite a bit of different processes that we do.

John and I are on a walking tour of his six-building commercial heat treat complex just northeast of Cleveland, Ohio. As he mentioned, Euclid Heat Treat Company is no fly-by-night establishment. John’s dad started the business and has passed it down to John who is well on his way to passing it on to his kids. Before we jump into the specifics of the “wonder wash” additive, which by the way, is not the name of the product — it is called SX Oil Lifter — but before we jump into the specifics of that additive, here is a bit more about the family business.

DG: So you got it from your dad?

JV: Yes.

DG: Roughly, when?

JV: Actually he passed in 1991. I have been running it since 1974. We had a general manager who ran the plant and he passed away, so they threw it to me. I was here for two years and my dad said, “It’s your baby. I am going to Florida.” So, that’s alright.

DG: And you have three kids?

John Vanas’ children: Deidre, John, and Claudine

JV: Three kids.

DG: Which are Deidre, John ….

JV: ….. and Claudine. They work here. John runs production, Deidre is going to be the General Manager, pretty much, and Claudine does the finance work. And I just try to keep everybody in line.

The Plant Floor: Where the Magic Happens

John and I were standing at the entrance of his rotary retort building, as I mentioned, one of the six buildings, located just off of 222nd Street in Euclid. As we were working our way to washer end of one of his rotary retort furnace lines, John explained the markets he serves with these furnaces.

JV: Two rotaries we’ve got an AGF 139 and an 1814, so this is a large retort that quenches into polymer and this one quenches into oil and goes right through the wash and out the other end to the finished product. Not too many people do rotary work anymore. There are a few of us around, but the beauty of this is the parts tumble and they get even case all over where with a belt furnace they mask each other by laying on each other, so it’s a good technology. Kind of a niche market for us.

DG: So it’s primarily fasteners?

JV: Fasteners, little stampings, just a little bit of everything. You can see here these are actually plugs for automobile and truck oil pans. We do a ton of these things. There’s a little stamping here that we’re running. You name it, if you have to have even case hardness we can do it in these two furnaces.

We then moved our way to the discharge shoot at the back end of the first rotary retort furnace where parts fell into an oil quench and then on into a spray washer. John wanted me to see that the oil being pulled out of the washing solution was almost 100% pure oil; very little, if any water. Here’s how John tells it:

JV: So we load through the retort into the oil quench then into a wash. This is a spray washer. Then we’ve got one of these hula hoop type tooth skimmers that skim the oil off into this drum. If you can see that; that’s almost pure oil. This is the XS Oil Lifter in here. But that’s almost pure oil. There is no water in there.

A heat treat washer solution that minimizes waste and maximizes green

We spent a few more minutes discussing John’s rotary retort lines and the washers associated with it, including a disc skimmer and another bucket of, as John describes it, “pure oil — there’s no water in there.” The point being, there is a cost savings when you send this oil out to be processed since there is very little water in the oil.

We next walked by Euclid’s intensive quench system which is essentially an IQ furnace sitting on top of an 11,000-gallon quench tank. Euclid’s intensive quench capabilities is another unique offering for the company. 

From Skepticism to New Product Line

After leaving the intensive quench and rotary retort building, we got into the meat of our conversation as we walked in the rain between buildings. The wonder-wash additive which I mentioned, called SX Oil Lifter, I asked John to tell me a bit more about that product. 

DG: So John, one of the reasons I came over is we want to talk about this SX Oil Lifter.

JV: Yes, this is a new product that was introduced to me, and I tried it just on a whim because I didn’t think it was going to work in a small wash that we’re going to see over here in one of our other buildings. And it worked so well, I’ve got it now in six washers.

DG: Maybe before we go back into the noise of the building, it was introduced to you by whom?

JV: Actually by a friend of Bill Lohn, he’s my partner. So we decided to give it a try. I put it in a washer and it worked so well that we put it in other washers. It lasts 3 to 4 months and then you change it. You never have to add anything to it, which is the beauty of it. And it just does a great job. So after 3 to 4 months, usually you get oil in the washer and up on the walls of the washer. It just gets kind of scummy. We’ve had some people use it and not change it for 6 months. It just depends on what you’re washing and how often you’re washing.

DG: Now, Bill found out about from who?

JV: He found out about it from a friend of his that was using it for another type of washing and they had initially had developed through industrial but no one was using it for that, so we negotiated with the company to get the license to do it by industrial type of washing. So now we’re the partners and we’re really the company for the industrial side. We’re trying to introduce it to the heat treating industry because once you try it, you’re going to like it.

Nano-Invasive Technology

DG: So just to be clear on it, it’s not a washer, it’s a chemical, but it’s not a chemical-chemical. It’s very biodegradable….

JV: It’s biodegradable. You can probably drink it. When you’re done with it, you can just put it down the drain. If you have oil that you haven’t skimmed off, you can let it settle out and drain it off that way, but most people just dump it right down the drain. There is nothing biologically harmful about it. There is nothing to harm the sewer. Our people test our sewers once a month here and they have found nothing. So that’s how we dispose of it, we just dump it down the drain.

DG: You were also mentioning about the quantity that you have to put in.

JV: Yes, it’s 3/10ths of a percent per gallon.

DG: So for a typical quench tank, what do you put in?

SX Oil Lifter Dosage Table

JV: Well this quench tank here has 750 gallons and I think we’re putting 80 ounces in there.

DG: And that 80 ounces will last you for 3 to 4 months, and maybe longer.

JV: Yes, then when you’re done, you dump it down the drain, clean it out and redo it.

DG: Ok, one other thing I wanted to ask. You said they call it “nano-invasive technology”?

JV: Yes, nano-invasive technology. What we found out is it does not actually dissolve in the water like your Tide or some other detergent or Simple Green. So, it’s in there and it’s lifting the oil, but it’s not dissolved in there, so when you’re dumping the fluid, you’re not dumping a dissolved chemical. And the fact that it is not dissolved, you don’t pull off that chemical you don’t have to add. You add water through your float valve, but you won’t add more product. The water evaporates, the product does not.

Seeing the Wonder Wash in Action

From there we went into the big batch building where three Super Allcases (a product of Surface Combustion) were located along with an older Lindberg IQ and a number of temper furnaces.

John showed me a batch wash that had just had the fluid changed the weekend prior, after 3 to 4 months of use. According to John, they probably could have gone longer, but that is the interval his maintenance team established to clean and change out the washing fluid. All the maintenance team did was wash down the inside of the washer and remove all the oil residue, skim off the oil from the top of the bath, and then dump the wash fluid down the drain. That’s it.

From the big batch building, we moved on to induction building.

JV: We have different stations and different power sources. We probably have about a dozen power sources and probably 40 different stations for doing different things. We’ve got a bolt machine there that he’s working on. We have a rotating machine there for different gears. We do a little bit of everything in here. We’ve got it crammed into the building pretty good. We just had this mezzanine put in and put the power sources up on top.

John’s father started the induction division. It was one of his special interests. John indicated that Euclid does a lot of work with local induction genius, as John describes him, Bill Stuehr of Induction Tooling out of North Royalton, Ohio, not far from Euclid.

The last building we entered was the vacuum and pit building.

JV: Here we have our vacuum equipment, our pit furnace, and our little batch furnace.

This building had about a dozen different vacuum and pit furnaces. After hitting this last building, we went back to talking a bit more about SX Oil Lifter and especially on the cost savings.

Pouring Savings into the Tank Instead of Down the Drain

DG: I assume there are cost savings here, right?

JV: Yes, it’s going to be about a third of what most people are using, from what we can determine. At least from what we used to use. We used to use a product from one of our oil suppliers and it would kinda make a funny-looking emulsion on the surface. And when we skimmed it off, we’d have to put it in the tank, let it settle out, drain it off until we got down to the oil and take the oil out. But we found out that we were getting a pretty good percentage of water in the oil when we sent it to the recycler. So he would charge us for getting the water out.

DG: So when you changed over the oil lifter, you didn’t have any problem with your current equipment that you used to separate the oil out I assume, right? There was no adverse effect?

JV: No, it was the same skimmer we always used, but it was just much more efficient.

DG: And you’re getting much better purity?

JV: Yes, we’re pretty much getting all oil in the tanks from the skimmers instead of an all water mixture.

When we walked back outside and headed back to John’s office, I asked him to repeat the cost savings information.

JV: It looks like from what we’ve seen from what our products we used to use, it’s going to be about a third.

DG: So you’re saving two-thirds?

JV: Yes. Plus, again, the beauty is, you don’t have to add all the time. You don’t have to have somebody coming in titrating. You can’t titrate this stuff. You can’t figure out what the percentage is because it’s such a small percentage, it doesn’t show up. We’ve tried several different methods to try to determine if we’ve got the right mix still in the tank, but we’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t. So, you put it in, you use it for 4 months or 3 months. When it starts to get to the point where perhaps it’s not cleaning the oil off well enough, you dump it and refill it.

DG: And you judge that not by taking any chemical composition of the solution, you just watch the parts, and if you’re seeing oil residue, it’s time to change.

JV: Exactly. And that kinda flies in the face of someone with technical knowledge, but that’s the way it works. You can tell if you’re washing off quench oil, if you start getting a smokey temper load, obviously you’ve got too much oil in there.

Once we got back to John’s office, I pressed him even more on the cost savings.

JV: We know the product we were using before was pretty expensive and I’ve talked to people who have tried and it and they said we’re putting a 55-gallon drum a month into our washer of the product we’re using now. And I said, well you won’t be doing that with SX Oil and I know that stuff is pretty expensive.

We further quantified the savings by talking about the money saved on oil processing because of less or no water in the oil being processed, plus the time savings of not having to test concentration levels of the wash. John had more to say about the time savings.

JV: Just talking to some other people who have tried the product, they said we’re going to save a lot of money because we have a guy who has to titrate it, has to add to it, and we don’t have to do that anymore.

DG: And they’re paying for that, I assume. They’re paying for that service or they’re paying one of their employees.

JV: Usually one of their employees. But it’s time-consuming and it’s a lab situation and titration. And with this, you don’t have to do anything.

I asked him if he had ever run into any problems with the product. He said that one customer called complaining the parts washed in the product were rusting faster than normal. After John and his fellow user discussed it for a while, they concluded that the product was doing such a good job of removing the oil from the surface, that it was more prone to rusting. What was the solution? John is working on adding a rust preventative to the product to help minimize the issue.

If it sounds too good to be true, it’s not. Here’s a brand new product. In fact, a brand new nanotechnology product, that

  • requires only .3 ounces per gallon of water,
  • lasts for 3-4 months minimum depending on your workload and oiliness of your products,
  • results in an almost pure oil skimming which minimizes oil reprocessing fees,
  • frees up your maintenance team to do other things besides worry about the washer,
  • and best of all, when you’re done, dump it down the drain.

If you’d like more information about SX Oil Lifter, please visit our website www.heattreattoday.com and search for SX Oil Lifter. We’ll have a full article about the product on the website along with a link to the product’s website. You can also email me directly if you’d like to get in touch with John Vanas at Euclid Heat Treat in Euclid, Ohio. My email address is doug@heattreattoday.com.

If you’d like more Heat Treat Radio, including our series on metallurgical poster children where we interview young, new metallurgical minds, please visit our website www.heattreattoday.com and click on Heat Treat Radio. Visit the website frequently. We post at least one heat treat news or technology item every weekday. Our content is targeted at manufacturers with in-house heat treat departments, especially in the aerospace, automotive, medical and energy sectors. Again, visit us at www.heattreattoday.com.

And finally, if you have a specific topic you’d like to see covered on Heat Treat Radio, please contact me directly at doug@heattreattoday.com.

Heat Treat Radio podcasts are the sole property of Heat Treat Today and cannot be reproduced without permission and appropriate attribution. This episode of Heat Treat Radio was produced and mixed by Jonathan Condon, Butler, Pennsylvania.

My name is Doug Glenn. Thanks for joining us.

To receive a copy of Euclid’s Safety Data Worksheet for SX Oil Lifter, contact Doug Glenn at doug@heattreattoday.com.

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today
Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.


To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

Heat Treat Radio #10: John Vanas on SX Oil Lifters Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #9: Tom Morrison on Why Manufacturers Should Send Their Entire Heat Treat Team to FNA 2018

Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio, a periodic podcast where Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, discusses cutting-edge topics with industry-leading personalities. Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript. To see a complete list of other Heat Treat Radio episodes, click here.


Click the play button below to listen.

Metal Treating Institute CEO, Tom Morrison, talks with Heat Treat Today’s Doug Glenn about 2018’s largest heat treat event, Furnaces North America, which will be held in Indianapolis, Indiana, from October 8-10, 2018. Find out why manufacturers with in-house heat treat shops should not only attend FNA 2018, but why they should send the entire team to this once-every-two-year event. And when you come to the end of the podcast, click over to Heat Treat TV to see a recently released FNA 2018 promotional video that will whet your appetite for the event.

FNA 2018


To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

Heat Treat Radio #9: Tom Morrison on Why Manufacturers Should Send Their Entire Heat Treat Team to FNA 2018 Read More »