HEAT TREAT RADIO

Heat Treat Radio #37: Rethinking Heat Treating for the 21st Century with Joe Powell (Part 1 of 4)

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO, QUENCHING TECHNICAL CONTENT

In this 4-part series, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, talks with Joe Powell of Integrated Heat Treating Solutions about bringing heat treating into the 21st century.

According to Joe, the real focus should be on the quenching portion of the process where distortion often happens. In many instances, distortion is able to be eliminated. Find out how in this episode.

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.

 

Click the play button below to listen.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Doug Glenn (DG):  On today’s episode, I sit down with Joe Powell, president of Akron Steel Treating Company to hear what he and his team are doing to combat heat treat distortion.  Joe Powell is a veteran in the industry and carries a wealth of knowledge with him.  Joe, your company has 75 years of experience working with different part makers, and after a very brief conversation with you, pretty much anyone would conclude that you’re a man on a mission to bring heat treating into the 21st century.  Before we turn you loose on that topic, first tell us a little bit about Akron Steel Treating and how it got started.

Joe Powell (JP):  It was founded by my father in our garage in 1943 at the behest of the Department of the Army who wanted him to heat treat some parts, and it grew along with all the tool and dye makers in Akron, OH by making machinery for making various rubber products like tires, belts and hoses . . . you name it.

DG:  You’ve also spearheaded another company: Integrated Heat Treating Solutions.  What are you doing with that company?

[blocktext align=”right”]”It should be ‘quench treating’ not ‘heat treating.’  That’s the way I look at it.” -Joe Powell[/blocktext]JP:  Integrated Heat Treating Solutions is the culmination of 75 years of commercial heat treating experience with literally over a 1000 different part makers.  What we’ve learned that if we can integrate our heat treating solutions with the part-making design and the optimal material selection, we can produce better parts.  And what I mean by “better parts” is they could be lighter, they could have longer fatigue life, and they could have less distortion after heat treating.  All of these benefits are brought to the table to part makers so that heat treating becomes a fully integrated part of lean manufacturing.

Once heat treating becomes a lean, integrated part of manufacturing, everybody wins.  It enables the use of leaner alloy materials; it eliminates oil quenching; it eliminates long carburizing cycles and batch carburizing cycles; and we now are able to literally do the heat treating in the manufacturing cell where the parts are made.

DG:  What do those two companies look like now?

JP:  We have about 50,000 square feet and are currently in the process of acquiring another building to our east.  We have 48 employees and there are three shifts; and again, we do salt heat treatment, vacuum heat treatment and controlled atmosphere heat treatment.  Also, we are currently getting into induction heat treating with our friends at Induction Tooling.

For the last 23 years, we have been concentrating on finding the best way to quench parts and to drive the distortion out of the part-making process.  The heat treat distortion has been a problem for centuries.  Parts crack, they distort, they come out of the heat treat process unpredictably with size change that is absolutely necessary to get the mechanical properties, but also, if it’s nonuniform, that size change can cause major problems down the line that have to be corrected by hard turning, grinding, flattening, straightening, you name it.

Dynamics of uniform and Uniform Intensive Quenching model (Source: integratedheattreatingsolutions.com)

We’ve also delved into the science of computer modeling, finite element modeling as well as computation of fluid dynamic modeling with our friends at DANTE Solutions.  What has happened from that modeling is seeing this concept: the surface of the part contains a bunch of grains, and those finite elements – if they are not quenched uniformly – will transform nonuniform, leading to nonuniform thermal shrinkage upon beginning quenched. Then they will also transform to martensite nonuniformly, which means that the thin and thick sections of a part will have different amounts of distortion and size change.  In order to control that, we’ve developed what we call “quench to fit” technologies where we literally build a shell on the outside of the part, using a gas quench or a uniform salt quench or uniform water quench.  Once you’ve built that shell in the first few seconds of the quench on the outside of the part, that martensite shell acts like a custom-made quench dye, and that custom-made quench dye allows the part core to cool by conduction through that shell.  So, if that cooling by conduction happens by very uniform conduction through the geometry and the mass of a given part, you will have a predictable size change after heat treat. And, you will enable the part designer to go back to the initial part design and adjust it accordingly so that it quenches to fit during the quench process.

When a commercial heat treater receives the part, 99 times out of 100, that part is using a material that was selected many, many years ago, because that is what they’ve always used.  Additionally, it’s going to be heat treated in legacy equipment that has always been used.  For instance, case carburized 8620 steel valve seats have been used for decades now, and they last about 40-70 hours in the fracking pump, but a ductile iron valve seat can be made to last many times longer; it’s cheaper to buy the material and our heat treating equipment can heat treat it in 5 minutes instead of a 20 hour case carburizing cycle in batches.  That single part flow of that new induction heat treating equipment and quenching equipment that is built into it can be built in right at the end of the CNC machines.

I am a commercial heat treater who believes that part design should be integrated for heat treating by the part-maker.  It’s a nuance, but what it really boils down to is that sometimes commercial heat treaters do it best, but sometimes the part-maker can do it better.  [Side bar quote: I am a commercial heat treater who believes that part design should be integrated for heat treating by the part-maker.  It’s a nuance, but what it really boils down to is that sometimes commercial heat treaters do it best, but sometimes the part-maker can do it better.]

[blockquote author=”Joe Powell” style=”2″]I am a commercial heat treater who believes that part design should be integrated for heat treating by the part-maker. It’s a nuance, but what it really boils down to is that sometimes commercial heat treaters do it best, but sometimes the part-maker can do it better.[/blockquote]DG:  So, the importance in the part design process of including the heat treater is that you can more consistently predict what the distortion will be, because if I understand it correctly, you can actually predict distortion in the part and therefore design the part with the distortion that will come consistently every time you design that part, yes?

JP:  Yes.  And it doesn’t matter if it’s an air quench or a hot salt quench or a uniform water quench, it just has to be very, very uniform from the initiation of the quench.  In other words, you can’t take it out of the furnace and air cool it for 45 seconds and then begin a water quench, it doesn’t work that way.  That shell is starting to form instantaneously when the heat is turned off.  An air quench is very slow compared to an intensive water quench and so you have to introduce that quench all over the part surface shell as instantaneously, and with as much uniform impact, as possible.  That’s what we do in terms of designing equipment to do the quench process.

DG: Right now, there are a lot of companies, a contractor or commercial heat treater, that send you parts to heat treat.  Is it not possible that if the part designer and the heat treater talk in advance as they design the part, that some of these parts could be, in fact, heat treated in-house and not be sent out to a commercial heat treater?  Is that possible?

JP:  They could actually be heat treated not only in-house, but directly after the CNC machine, right in the manufacturing cell, right after the forge.  It takes the proper selection of the optimal hardened ability material. In other words, part of that part design with the heat treater has to be considerations like, “Is it going to get too hard in the core?  Is it going to swell up too much in the core?  Is it going to be unable to build that shell on the surface without blowing it off, because the core starts to harden up?”  So again, the optimal material selection and the design of the mass and the geometry of the part need to be considerations that the heat treater gets a chance to look at.

A “textbook” example of the bell curve. (Source: integratedheattreatingsolutions.com)

DG:  So, if the part designer and the heat treater get together and talk about the part design before the part is finalized, or if they’ve got a legacy part, they can sit down and talk with a heat treater that understands what you’re doing over at Akron Steel and Integrated Heat Treating Solutions. If they can understand that, and if they can talk with you about how that part might be redesigned, it’s very possible that you could use lower cost materials to get the same thing, minimize the amount of time to actually heat treat, and you may be able to put that part in a single piece or at least possibly a small batch flow so that there’s not a bottleneck at heat treat, yes?

JP:  Yes.

Sponsorship for this episode is Furnaces North America the Virtual Show.

DG:  Joe, let’s talk about the quenching bell curve as it relates to distortion.

JP:  There are many, many metallurgists and many metallurgical textbooks that indicate that the faster the quench cooling rate, the higher the probability of distortion.  There is a curve that is generated that basically says that if you quench very slowly in gas, or if you increase that quench rate and go to a hot salt or a martemper bath or an austemper bath or you increase it even further with warm oil or highly agitated oil, or you go to a brine quench where you do a polymer or a polymer water quench where you increase the rate of quench cooling, there is a point at which most of the parts are going to crack and you’re going to have major distortion.  It is not because of the quench speed being faster, it is because the uniformity tends to be less the faster your quenchant.  In other words, you need to keep the water from film-boiling and creating a situation where the initial quench is actually done under a steam blanket, or gas, very slowly.  Once the thin sections of the part quench-out under gas, then you have the thick sections that are still under that gas blanket, and you have very rapid cooling and very rapid martensite transformations that cause a shift in the size of the part where the shell now cannot contain the core swelling that’s happening underneath the surface.

Whereas 21st century heat treating practice is, what I call, a “uniform quench renewal rate” and an instant impact.  In other words, you instantly impact the shell, create that shell, and once it’s created with uniform cooling, then the rest of the cooling happens by conduction through that shell.  Whatever the geometry and the mass of the part is will determine that uniform conduction cooling which ends up being very predictable.  Once it’s predictable, then you can morph the green size of the part before heat treating so that it predictably quenches to fit during the quench process.

(source: integratedheattreatingsolutions.com)

DANTE Solutions has a method where they use their model to model the finite elements in the part so that the thin and thick sections of the part quench uniformly. IQ Technologies Inc. and my company, Integrated Heat Treating Solutions, have gone on the other side and shown that it is really a bell-shaped curve, and that the probability of distortion goes back down if you can create that shell on the outside of the part instantaneously, and then provide a uniform quench renewal rate to the part surface so that the core can cool by uniform conduction through that shell.

DG:  Let’s just put in our listener’s minds the standard bell curve.  Most of the quenching and most of the textbooks that we see these days is done on the left hand side of that bell curve, and as you approach the peak of that bell curve, the probability of distortion and/or cracking occurs.  People are saying – don’t quench too fast because you’ll get cracking.  You’re kind of switching the whole paradigm to say that it’s not the speed at which you quench, but more so: Can you create, almost instantaneously, a hard shell because of exceptionally rapid cooling on the whole part so that that shell basically holds the part in place?  If you can get that, then you can cool the rest of the part, however slow or fast, in a sense, you want, because it’s not going to distort because it’s already locked in.

JP:  Right, and this is cooling by conduction which is the physics of the material.  How fast will it give up the heat through its mass?  It’s the difference between 100 degrees or 50 degrees or 10 degrees per second of cooling and 400 to 600 degrees centigrade cooling per second, so it’s very, very intensive.  The middle of the bell curve, where most parts are cracking, is because there is not a uniform quench renewal rate.  You start off with a gas quench, then you end up with a very intensive evaporative cooling quench with nucleate boiling.  You then end up with water quenching without boiling, and so you have three different phases of cooling happening on different parts of the part. This is exacerbated by different parts in different sections of the batch which will have different cooling rates.

It’s almost impossible to get the full benefits of very, very intensive quenching or even very, very uniform gas quenching in a vacuum furnace unless you have staged the cooling in such a way that you create that uniform shell at the beginning of the quench, and you hit that martensite start temperature and cool to that martensite start temperature all over the shell of the part uniformly.  That’s the key.

DG:  There are several things that jump into my mind like questions that might arise from people.  You’ve already hit on the differences in part thickness – you may have thick sections, you may have thin sections.  It’s very possible to maybe get down to the martensite start temperature on the thin section right away, but the thick section may not be, and therefore you’re going to distort because you haven’t created that “frozen shell” uniformly around the entire part.  Let’s talk about, not just part thickness, but part geometry in the sense of the awkward curves and turns or lips and things of that sort on parts.  How would we deal with that?

JP:  That’s where new 21st century heat treating equipment needs to be designed.  Every furnace company that is selling furnaces to either captive heat treaters or commercial heat treaters calls itself a furnace company.  The reality is, yes, heating is important and it is the precursor to getting the mechanical properties, but the heat treatment is actually done, and the mechanical properties are actually obtained, in the quenching process.  It should be “quench treating” not “heat treating.”  That’s the way I look at it.

Image from Smarter Everyday YoutTube video on Prince Rupert’s Drop (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe-f4gokRBs&ab_channel=SmarterEveryDay)

For the last 23 years that’s what has been more apparent to me.  My dad taught me how to quench stamps that were used for marking the inside of tire molds, and these steel stamps would uniformly blow up if you just quenched them.  But if you were able to uniformly quench the marking end, you could get it hard as hell and it would last a long, long time, but you had to kind of bifurcate the quench.  You had to make sure that you created that shell in the marking area of the stamp and let the rest of the stamp kind of cool much more slowly.  In other words, create the shell in the face of the stamp where the lettering is, and set those letters.  Then the rest of the stamp can basically cool much slower because you don’t need the hardness there; it’s not the working part of the part.

Also, the designers of the stamps had to integrate the right radius in the face of the stamp.  If they had sharp corners, those sharp corners would blow off during the heat treat.  So, over time, we said, “If you don’t want us to crack this stamp, you’re going to have to put a radius over here and change the design slightly.”  It didn’t take much change, but it did take a recognition of the fact that this was not going to work.  There’s no way to eliminate the nonuniform cooling in the shell if you’ve got a corner.  Steam collects in that corner and it doesn’t quench, so you can’t create the hardened shell.

DG:  Let’s take a little deviation and talk about something non-metal.  Let’s talk about the Prince Rupert’s drop to illustrate residual compressive stresses.

JP: The mystery of the Prince Rupert’s drop of glass is that glass makers noticed that if they dropped a drop of molten glass into a bucket of cold water it would form a drop that has a head and then a tail – it almost looks like a tadpole.  If you hit the head of that glass drop with a hammer or try to break it with a pair of pliers, you can’t do it.  It is literally unbreakable at the head.  However, if you snap the tail off, it instantaneously explodes.  This is because there are counterbalancing tensile stresses that are below the surface in the tail that once you break the compressive stresses off, it’s like taking the hoop off a barrel and the barrel staves explode; the elements on the surface just explode.  The reason they don’t explode on the drop of glass at the other end is because there are sufficiently high compressive stresses on that surface that hold the drop of glass and keep it from fracturing.

DG:  This is a fascinating video where you take a Prince Rupert’s drop, actually hang this Prince Rupert’s drop and shoot it with a .38 or a .45 or a 9 mm, hitting the head of that tadpole, if you will, and it shatters the bullet while the glass remains untouched.  However, if a guy just simply takes his finger, or whatever, and snaps the tail, not just the tail shatters, but the whole tadpole blows up.

JP:  What we’ve been able to do with all of the research that we’ve done is to harness those compressive stresses and make them available to the part-marker for making their parts more robust, making them lighter, and making them basically carbide hard and hammer tough.  They don’t chip when hit with a hammer.

DG:  Let’s jump back to some of the projects you’ve done at Integrated Heat Treating Solutions.  Do you have any current projects that you’re working on where this integrated solution – where you were involved with part design or improvement of part design – worked well?

JP:  Yes.  There are several case studies.  The first case study was a punch that lasts 2 – 9 times longer than an oil quench punch.

DG:  A punch for what?

JP:  Punching holes in metal plates. And the other thing that has happened is that since we’ve begun working with Induction Tooling, we’re able to then bring this down to the level of thinner parts and more complex geometry parts.  We’re able to get more hardenability out of lean hardenability alloy such as ductile iron. Plain ductile irons are now acting as carbides.  Even the people that make the material said it couldn’t be done, but we’re doing it.

DG:  Can you give an example of that?

Watch more resources at Integrated Solutions website. Click the image above to access these resources.

JP:  Yes, that would be a fracking pump valve seat made out of ductile iron and heat treated with our special heating and quenching technologies.

DG:  What was the performance prior to the treatment and afterwards?

JP:  40 to 60 hours and our initial testing we got 166 hours, so 2 ½ times longer.

DG:  So 2 ½ times better performance on this fracking valve seat, and you were using the same material?

JP:  No.  Rather, we replaced an 8620 carburized steel that needed to be carburized for 20 hours in the furnace, and we did it with a 5 minute induction heating process.

DG:  Of what type of material?

JP:  Ductile iron.

DG:  So we’ve got a punch, a valve seat in the fracking industry.  What else?

JP:  We have bevel gears that we do.  We have worked with the part manufacturer and they’ve adjusted their CNC program so that it actually quenches to fit and doesn’t require a final grind.

DG:  Expensive hard machining or hard grinding after heat treat.

JP:  Right.  And it saves them about $750 per gear in final grind costs.  And, the gear lasts longer because it has high residual compressive surface stresses versus a standard carburization process and quenching in oil that does not have as high of a residual compressive surface stress.  Especially after you grind it all off to get the final dimensions you want.

DG:  Right.  So you put all these nice hard stresses in, then you grind them off.

JP:  Exactly.

DG:  Any other examples?

JP:  We have a company that wanted to have a weldable gear rack that could be welded on in the field on mining equipment that’s out on the side of a mountain.  Because it might be cold up there, and they didn’t want to have to pre- and post-heat in order to weld on the gear rack, or repair a tooth on the gear rack, they wanted to have a material that had less hardenability but still wanted to have all of the mechanical properties.  We were able to get the mechanical properties of 4330 from a 4130 material that doesn’t need to be pre- and post-heated to prevent it from cracking when welding it onto the machinery.  They call that “field repairability.” So, we were able to enable field repairability and still maintain the mechanical properties’ requirements.

DG:  In future episodes, we’ll go into some depth on some of those applications you just described, but before we wrap up things for this episode, is there a last impression you’d like to leave with us?

JP: Professor Jack Wallace* did not believe that there was a right half of the bell-curve, he did not believe that intensive quenching would work, but, again, he became a believer. It is all key to understanding the dynamics and uniformity of quenching over time. If you get the uniformity, you’re in good shape and eliminate a lot of heat treating problems.

DG: Thanks, Joe. Looking forward to you joining us for future episodes.

JP: Thanks so much.

 

 

*Professor Jack Wallace was the “Dean of the College of Metallurgical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland Ohio – who said in 1997, ‘Intensive water quenching would not work!  – The parts will blow up in the quench!’  He became a convert once he figured out how compressive surface stresses worked during uniform quenching.” Information provided by Joe Powell.

 

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 #37: Rethinking Heat Treating for the 21st Century with Joe Powell (Part 1 of 4) Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #36: A Discussion with Harb Nayar, Sintering Guru

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO, SINTERING POWDER/METAL TECHNICAL CONTENT

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, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews Mr. Harb Nayar, president and founder of TAT Technologies LLC. Harb is both an inquisitive learner and dynamic entrepreneur who will share his current interests in the powder metal industry, and what he anticipates for the future of the industry, especially where it bisects with heat treating.

Click the play button below to listen.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Harb Nayar (HN):  My name is Harb Nayar.  I am the president of TAT Technologies, LLC.  It is a very small 10 year old company that focuses on powdered materials and processes, especially sintering.

Doug Glenn (DG):  This experience you've had with powder metals stretches over 50 years.  I understand that people recognize you as “the sintering guru” for the value that you've brought to the industry.  Can you share what intrigued you about the powder metal process and the powder metal industry that began your lifelong interest?

Harb Nayar at TAT Technologies (photo source: tat-tech.com)

HN:  There is no doubt that PM (powder metallurgy) is a very, very unique manufacturing process to make metallic products.  If I have to pick one thing that I would say which is almost becoming a destructive technology in the manufacturing of complex shapes (metallic products), that would be additive manufacturing using metal powders to start with.  And you may ask why it's destructive.  The answer is relatively short and simple.  That it takes a totally different way of manufacturing.  You are adding layer by layer to build a 3-dimensional component and therefore you can make unusual designs and unusual complex shapes out of it.  The PM is used to make 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional parts for a very long time, but this one can make 4 dimensions.  Now you may say there are only 3 dimensions, where are you coming up with the fourth one?  Well, in my opinion, the fourth one in this case is emptiness.  In other words, it can create design.  Within the solid, you have empty spaces, so to speak, and that is what I call the fourth dimension.  This is where the major benefit will be to reduce weight.

Now, to really give you how much design flexibility there is, I'll give a very simple example.  Suppose you are trying to make this one piece, or many pieces, of a globe of the whole world, but you want it to be stainless steel.  And you want to make it in one piece with no welding, but you want to show the hills and the valleys and the ocean and everything else, and you want to keep the interior of this globe empty to keep the weight light.  You can only do this by additive manufacturing and to the best of my knowledge, there is no other way to make it.  That is where I'm emphasizing the fourth dimension – the emptiness.

DG:  Yes.  And now this would have a pretty significant influence on both the aerospace and the automotive industries where lightweighting plays a key role.

HN:  I think lightness, just as in the cellphone business or the semiconductor business where things became smaller and smaller, in the product line it's going to be, can we make it lighter and lighter, if for no other reason than to use less material to begin with.  The other one I think that's going to emerge is most probably making more and more parts by powder metallurgy from metal powder which are 100% free alloyed.  In other words, all the elements are in each metal powdered particle.  In other words, you're starting with a micro ingot as opposed to a big ingot that you normally use to make bars, and then from bars you cut pieces, and then from those pieces you do hard forging or machining.  But here, you will be starting from the other end where each powdered particle now is a micro ingot and the challenge is how you take billions of these micro ingots and make a 20 lb. part out of it.  That’s the other thing that most probably is going to start picking up.

Students taking a hands-on course with TAT Training Center (photo source: tat-tech.com)

Especially the low alloy steel parts.  My personal feeling is that a lot of technology, although it has already been developing, but, it will develop much more rapidly in the next 10 years.  That is where the role of the heat treat people will be actually much bigger, because by doing a heat treat, you can always make an alloy or a material more strong, so to speak, as that's the main function of heat treat.  But in the low alloy steels, the reason you are adding alloy is so that it's more conducive to heat treatment.  Certain alloying elements help you to strengthen the material more than certain other elements.  I think the powder metallurgy technique, each micro ingot is uniformly alloy, where when you start with a big billet, it's not uniformly alloyed.  I think that the role of the PM would be to reduce those dimensional, (like mechanical properties in 3 dimensions are different if you're making something that originally was cast as a billet), where in the metal powder particle, because the distance is so small in each particle, each element is much, much more uniformly dispersed.  And also, there are no stringers that you normally get when you're casting, let’s say, a 7” diameter bar or a 15” square bar, out of which you then make other things.  Not only will the alloys be more uniformly distributed in the micro ingot, but there will be no stringer type of impurities.

DG:  So then, Harb, what is your prognosis for the future of the industry looking forward?

HN:  That is an unusually good question, and also a very complicated question.  But I can make three or four general statements.  One is that powder metallurgy is going to continue to grow.  A lot of people will take issue with me, but in my opinion, with additive manufacturing coming in and with these other developments that I mentioned, in the last 2 – 3 years it has been below 6% growth rate.  It used to be 7 -8% and it began to flatten out a little bit.  I think that AM and this other micro ingot approach, I think that it will swing back to 7, 8 or 9% growth by the middle or latter part of this decade.  And all these changes that are coming will affect heat treat.  The way I see it, in heat treat, the changes will be based on two things: what are they heat treating right now?  For example, if they're heat treating almost exclusively from macro ingots and now they have to worry about the micro ingot type of products, obviously heat treat has to shift somehow.  The second one: how is being heat treated right now?  That's where I feel that oil will be going down and other quenching techniques most probably will be coming up.  Part of that will be influenced by as the PM makes inroads into machine parts or hard forged parts using macro ingots.  The micro ingot will somehow affect the heat treat.

DG:  So those will be the main things: that PM will continue to grow and elimination of oil.

HN:  Well, the PM will continue to grow, but that will then affect the heat treat industry, yes.

DG:  Harb, could you tell us how you got interested in powder metallurgy, and also how you came to be known as the 'sintering guru' in the United States?

The Delhi Iron Pillar (photo source: Harb Nayar)

HN:  Well, it all started when I watched an American movie at 17 years old, in India, in English of course.  At the age of 18, I came to study at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY in mechanical engineering.  When I went back to India, I happened to see a monument that's called Delhi Iron Pillar.  I was born in Delhi, I had seen it, but it never impressed me that much.  But when I read the story behind it, that it was made by starting with iron oxide powders, and that got converted into a sponge iron and then sponge iron was hot forged into this 14 ton structure.  It is the largest part known to be made by powder metallurgy and was made around 14 centuries ago and it still has not rusted.  So with all the story behind it, there are still some mysteries behind it, but the main thing is that powder metallurgy impressed me.  It changed my course.

DG:  In fact, seeing the Delhi iron pillar did change Harb's life course.  He went back to school and studied sintering and earned a master's degree in metallurgy at Notre Dame University.  Then he poured himself into the practical, returning to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he earned his PhD.  Shortly thereafter, Harb worked in a research lab for Copper Range Company where he researched the possibility of making copper strip directly from powder, as opposed to casting it from molten copper.  Unfortunately, that research project never grew legs.  His next employment, however, did bear fruit.  After Copper Range, Harb moved to New Jersey, and here's what happened.

HN:  So after working for Copper Range, I went to New Jersey and worked for an industrial gas company.  It was called Airco Industrial.  It was well known for making nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and many, many other gases.  When I was hired, they had no powder metallurgy activity of any kind.  So my first assignment was, can the powder metallurgy be used to be make electrodes, welding rods, etc, because Airco also had a welding products division.  I then did make hardfacing rods and welding rods by powders.

DG:  Although the welding products division was sold, Harb found a new home at Airco researching and developing synthetic gases.  Remember, in the early 70's, there was the energy crisis and a concern that there would be a shortage of industrial gases.  During his time at Airco, Harb was one of the early developers of synthetic gases, or what might be more commonly known today as mixed gases.  After Airco, Harb took some extended time off to raise his young daughters after the untimely passing of their mother.  After the daughters were out of the house, Harb wondered what he should do with himself.  TAT Technologies, the company he currently owns and operates, was just the answer.

Harb, tell us a little about what you're currently doing with TAT Technologies.

HN:  TAT stands for Temperature Atmosphere Time Technology.  Whatever my thermal processing background was, I decided to work on that, but focus only on powder metallurgy to start with, not all the other thermal processes.  In other words, start with sintering to begin with.

I opened a school to teach sintering, just like I learned when I left and came from India.  I started teaching sintering but did it hands-on; not just lectures, but hands-on.  So, I bought a sintering furnace for testing equipment and opened my own lab in 2012.  We started with education and training, then added some R&D to it, then developed equipment that can help to increase the production rate in sintering furnaces by as much as 30 – 40% in existing furnaces.  Slowly, we would begin to work with a very small number of people and that's what we've been doing until 2019.  Then, of course, in 2020, COVID-19 came along.  Just like in the 70's, the bad time, at least it appeared to be a bad time anyway, that there was a natural gas shortage, that gave the birth to Synthetic Atmospheres.  That was my silver lining then.  My silver lining this time is that it forced me to look into other projects which may be even more interesting.  And I decided to build by intellectual property.  So since then, I've received one patent, two are already applied for, two are in the process, and another four or five are waiting in line.

Students engaged in hands-on learning at TAT Training Center (photo source: tat-tech.com)

My future now is in two directions: One is to continue with what we became very good at until 2019 and make it go further, and the other is to, hopefully, develop this new project and figure out a way of commercializing them.  I believe in the old theory “that one in hand is better than two in the bush,” I change it to “keep the one you have in the hand the best you can, and still go after the two in the bush.”  This is what has evolved because of COVID-19.

DG:  Let's stick with TAT for just a moment.  Where do you see it going in the future?

HN:  There are three activities that we plan to pursue based on the patents that are issued or are being issued.  One is a project which promotes production of low alloy steels by powder metallurgy.  I believe there is a very big future in that.  In other words, how to bring out the better properties of a micro ingot compared to a big ingot and how to translate that into better products which require less energy and will cost less to manufacture.  Right now they are being manufactured in one way or another by either machining or by taking a billet, chopping it down to small pieces and then doing hard forging.  I plan to make the starting material, from my hard forging using low alloy steel, would be powders as opposed to a preform that originally was cast somehow somewhere.  That's my one project.  And that will affect heat treat quite a bit.  Presently, most of the heat treat is done on parts which are really made by the big casting approach, ingot casting; these bring all the imperfection from the casting into the final product which is then heat treated.  My question is that if the product was much more uniform, then it may develop somewhat different heat treat approaches and it most probably will reduce, if not eliminate, oil quenching.

DG:  So, why the elimination of oil quenching?

HN:  There are two reasons.  One obviously is just safety as oil tends to catch fire, but the main reason is that if you can distribute the alloys more evenly, there is a high probability you need less total amount of alloying element, which will give you a similar mechanical property because it doesn't have some of these irregularities.  Now that “most probability low alloy steel” with even a lower amount of alloying is going to be more conducive to faster quenching.  In powder metallurgy – gas quenching is already used after sintering – they call it sinter hardening.  In my opinion, heat treat will have to somehow modify its practices to deal with if the same forged product is really made from micro ingots as opposed to a macro ingot.

DG:  Very interesting.  So that is one prospect of three.  What is another one?

Student learning at TAT Training Center (photo source: tat-tech.com)

HN:  In the additive manufacturing, there are two weak points there, that's why it's not taking up as quickly, commercially, I'm talking, R&D, the money, the research, is going at a very high rate, but the actual production where you can see a part going in the automotive is not there yet.  The reason is the shaping process – layer by layer – is somewhat slower.  They have to speed it up quite a bit in order to make it what I call mass production.  That's one, at the moment, still a bottleneck.

The second one is a bottleneck that they are not addressing yet because they feel they have to take care of the other bottleneck first, and that is because wherever there will be high volume of additive manufacturing, there the green part will have some binder in it.  That binder has to be removed prior to sintering.  Therefore, I am going to be focusing on binder, and start getting ready within a couple of years, for mass debinding.

Right now, the debinding is done in small batches only.  I'm going to be ready for production on a mass scale when the shaping people start making the green parts faster.  And it's much more challenging than the debinding in the conventional powder metallurgy because there the amount of binder, or what they call lubricant, by volume is less than 10%, whereas in the additive manufacturing, wherever they use the binder, is always much more than 10%.  That makes it a bigger challenge to get rid of it.  I already have an expertise in how to get rid of the binder in the conventional part of metallurgy, so I will use my dad’s know-how as a stepping stone to develop, what I call mass production, debinding operation.  That's my second project.

The third one came directly out of COVID-19.  I cannot get into it because there are still some patent issues involved here, but I want to replace N95, which is made from what's called unwoven polymer, and I want the filtering portion to be metallic.  That would be my dream project.

DG:  Any last messages for our listeners?

HN:  We are not doing it, but we are open to it, and that is because your main listeners are heat treaters, so I'm open to them – that my background is furnaces and atmospheres and temperature – to anyone if they have problems to reduce the atmosphere cost, let's say.  Or they want to increase the productivity of their furnaces, they could reach me and once I understand their need, I will be willing to work with them on how to accomplish those two goals: cost reduction, atmosphere reduction and the third will be energy production.  I have a pretty good background in all of those three areas when it comes to thermal processes in general.  Even though my focus right now is on sintering, that does not mean I cannot get into annealing or brazing or heat treating or tempering, and so on.

DG: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Harb.

HN: Thanks Doug

 

You can reach out to Harb Nayar by email at harb.nayar@tat-tech.com or at www.tat-tech.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.

HTT · Heat Treat Radio: Harb Nayar, President of TAT Technologies

Heat Treat Radio #36: A Discussion with Harb Nayar, Sintering Guru Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #35: Reasons to Attend Furnaces North America with Tom Morrison, CEO of the Metal Treating Institute

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO

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, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews Tom Morrison, CEO of the Metal Treating Institute (MTI) to reveal the new look of Furnaces North America (FNA) 2020. The engaging online platform will allow heat treaters and suppliers to network, share information, "shake hands," and more virtually. Additionally, Tom will talk about how heat treaters can attend technical talks at the FNA 2020 Virtual.

Click the play button below to listen.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

DG:  We want to talk about Furnaces North America which obviously in these COVID days has taken a little bit of a turn, right or left depending on how you want to look at it.  My understanding is that Furnaces North America is moving from a live face to face event to a virtual event.  Tell us why.

TM:  For months we have been tracking the status and trends.  Our executive team has been meeting every single week for months and really watching the trends and developments of COVID-19 and its impact on meetings.  I'm a part of a number of forums and I'm connected with hundreds, if not thousands of associations, and everybody is canceling their meetings.  So there is too much liability and risk and we don't want to our attendees and exhibitors in that moment with COVID-19 and just the dangers and stuff that are associated with it.  There came a moment when we decided: “You know what? The timing is right for us to do this.”  So we went virtual.  Typically, about 1% of the industry attends a heat treat show.   What we're very excited about is that we're going to be able to bring all that energy and excitement, that you'd experience live, into a virtual event, right to the front doorstep and computer screens of every captive and commercial heat treater, as well as suppliers in the marketplace. It is just an incredible and unique opportunity as we go into this digital age of training and trade shows in the future.

DG:  Is it still going to be September 30 through October 2, but not full days, correct?

TM:  That is correct.  We've learned in watching other trade shows out there, and conferences that go virtual, that people don't sit on the computer for eight hours, but they can take breaks at their leisure and also you can watch at a pace you want.  It's going to be September 30th through October 2nd   You can actually go onto www.furnacesnorthamerica.com and click 'schedule' at the top, but it's going to from 11:00 in the morning until 5:00 in the afternoon.

DG:  And just to be clear, that's going to be east coast time?

TM:  Yes.  That's kind of a funny story, Doug: When we were looking at the times, I said, yes, we can start at 9:00 in the morning.  Because when you go to a live show, everybody is in the city under that time zone.  But one of my very perceptive staff said, “Tom, if we do it at 9:00, the people on the west coast are going to be getting up and getting in there at 6:00 a.m.”  So yes, it's going to be at 11:00 EST which will then make it 8:00 a.m. on the west coast.

DG:  Tell me why else your team, yourself and some of the exhibitors you've talked to so far are excited about this new virtual event.

TM:  The sponsors have stepped up.  We had a webcast with over 100 exhibitors telling them about the transition and we had to transition our sponsorships from the live show to this show, and I think about the caliber of sponsor that came to the table within that first day selling out.  We've got ECM USA, Gasbarre Furnace, Thermal Processing Systems, McLaughlin Furnaces, Super Systems, Surface Combustion, Honeywell in the burner market, RoMan Manufacturing in the power market.  And think of vacuum technologies.  Eight companies that jumped right out of the gate and said, “We believe in this and we think this is the future and we want to be a part of it and in the building of it.”  That's where some of the excitement is coming from.

But the biggest excitement to me personally, and my staff and the leadership that are putting this on, is virtual meetings are never going to do away with live meetings.  Live meetings, as soon as there's a vaccine, or we see it go away and people are comfortable getting back together, live meetings are going to come back to everywhere.  It's just a matter of when.  But while we're waiting for that to happen, the digital marketplace is going to grow like never before.  I've had so many sales agents say that they have sold more furnace equipment in the past three or four months than they have in the previous 6 months, and they haven't seen a single customer.  So I think there's a market for that.  And so we're excited.  This is a stepping stone into that marketplace and taking our furnace show to the 99% of the people that don't typically attend the show.  Most people can't bring their seven furnace operators to a Furnaces North America, but now they can take the content and the trade show right to their computer screen which is really exciting.

DG:  I want to ask you two questions, first about exhibitors and then about attendees.  Let's knock it down to the very basics.  Why should an exhibitor get involved?

TM:  Exhibitors should get involved because this is an opportune step into the digital mode.  Our booth fee for the exhibit show is only $1500 compared to if you came to the live show, the smallest you're going to pay is $5000 for everything, including travel up to 50 – 60K if you're one of the bigger companies.  This gives any heat treat supplier an opportunity to get involved.  If you consider that between industrial heating magazine as our media partner, we're going to have a $200,000 valued marketing campaign with direct mail, email, social media going for the next two and a half months until the show happens.  There's going to be a lot of activity.  We expect that we're going to have

Virtual Booth for Exhibitors

great attendance.  So, an exhibitor that doesn't get involved in this is going to lose out on the one opportunity in the next 12 months to get new customers.  That's what this show is about – connecting them to leads.  Our platform, if they go onto www.furnacesnorthamerica.com and click on exhibitors, they can see a webcast of 38 minutes where we actually unveil the digital platform where they're going to be able to connect them with customers to build their digital exhibitor booth.  I know that most exhibitors out there are used to that live handshake format, and some ask, “How do we shake hands through the computer?”  Well, you're going to see how you do that if you go watch that video.  Exhibitors should do it for one reason:  leads, leads, leads.  If you're not in the show, you're going to miss out on the opportunity to get access to leads that carry you into 2021.

[blocktext align="right"]"Exhibitors should do it for one reason:  leads, leads, leads..."[/blocktext]DG:  So I understand that every exhibitor will get a complete list of attendees at the conclusion of the show, but not with email addresses. Can you elaborate on what exhibitors have to do to capture email addresses?

TM:  There is a box in your exhibit booth where it says contact needs more information and it gives you the ability to click on what you want to see more of from that exhibitor.  When you click that, it's just like being in the live show – remember how they scan you badge?  Well, it's like a badge scan.  But here's the cool thing:  On the day of the show, the exhibitors are watching their exhibit dashboard and anybody that is looking at your screen on their computer, you can see how many are looking at it.  But if they click on anything in your booth, their demographic data and contact data go right into your real-time exhibit lead dashboard.  And you can download those leads at any time.  You get everything but the email.  Now if they click on the 'contact me for more information', that's like scanning a badge and you get their email address at that very moment.  At the end of the show, you're going to be able to download a list of the entire database of attendees to your computer right after the show so you can then reach out to them and contact them for sales.  We're trying to make this very content rich and very data-driven rich and giving the exhibitors the information in real-time so they can follow up on it.

DG:  Why should manufacturers with their own in-house heat treat be coming to the event?

TM:  The cool thing about attendees is that in every shop, everybody has three or four people that really 'get' everything they need to know about being an effective employee.  And then there are about four or five others that are always saying, “I wish I could be like them.”  And the difference in those two employees traditionally is training knowledge.  So the ability to bring the latest trends, technology to their computer screen and have them watch that, they're going to be a better employee because they're going to know more.  One key thing that's going to be really cool about this show for attendees, is that we've made it affordable for everybody to be involved.  Just like our live show, you can log in and register just to go look at the booths and the trade show.  And that's very powerful.  But here's what's going to happen.  There's a space on the exhibit booth where you can watch product demonstrations and we're encouraging every exhibitor to do a 7 – 10 minutes product demonstration video and upload it to their booth.  Let's say there are 100 exhibitors, your furnace operator, or your manager for that matter, can go in and watch every one of those product demonstrations on everything that you can imagine heat treat, that's going to be highly educational.  And that is free.  That is just if they go in and look at the booths.  On an upgrade, you can upgrade to the conference session, in which there are 35 conference sessions and four live sessions, that when they happen, they're going to be recorded live and then they're going to be made available immediately after that.

FNA seminar in 2018

DG:  Tell us about the highly informative and cutting edge content that will be covered in the technical sessions at Furnaces North America 2020 virtual event.

TM:  Let me share with you what some of the sessions are.  In the live format, we're going to be talking about the seven questions someone should always ask before buying heat treat equipment, the key behind managing and controlling distortion (that's a big issue and one of the most read things in your publication and Industrial Heating magazine), and the aerospace, automotive and agriculture.  What's next for that?  In the world of 3D printing technology, processes and materials that could impact more heat treating or less heat treating in a particular product.  When you've got the coming economic boon, reshoring with all of this COVID-19, things happening in China and other countries, how many companies are going to reshore their products back to America?  What does that mean for manufacturing, which can boost heat treating and the level that it is done in the states?  That's the four live sessions.  Then if we look at the technical track, there are four or five technical tracks that are going to be highly informative.  We've got furnace equipment and controls, processes and quality, emerging technologies, furnace maintenance and operations and productivity; all key things to any captive and/or commercial heat treater in operating a productive business that maximizes through-put.  Everything that we're doing this year is focused on helping a commercial or a captive to be very efficient.  Here's what's happened.  COVID has ransacked employeeship.  People have had to let people go and they're operating on minimal staff in a lot of cases.  So it's imperative that both captive and commercials learn how to operate with 20-30% staff, and you can only do that if your people know what they need to do knowledge-wise in order to that.

DG:  Somebody potentially wanting to attend, let's say some captive heat treater or even a commercial heat treater, they can go on the website, I assume, and look now at what the topics are going to be, correct? They can see what the technical sessions will be.

TM:  The entire Furnaces North America website has been transformed into our virtual show information.  You can go there right now and look at everything – the schedule, if you want to exhibit, you can hover over exhibitor and click exhibit information and it gives you all the details, and then a place to click to sign up your exhibit booth and we'll get that set up for you.  Registration is going to open August 1 for everyone.

[blocktext align="left"]"In the live format, we're going to be talking about the seven questions someone should always ask before buying heat treat equipment, the key behind managing and controlling distortion..."[/blocktext]I don't want to go too far without mentioning the pricing.  We are so determined to get people that never attend a live event to get involved in the show, here's the special offer we're making.  The first two people that register with any show (and you have to register at the same time) is only $199 and you get everything.  You get the trade show, you get the live session, you get the 35 technical sessions.  Everybody that registers after that for that show is only $49.  Literally, for $500, a captive or commercial could register up to six people into the show.  That is going to have a proton impact on that operation because that's six people that are more educated on what heat treating is about than they were before the show.

DG:  So that's $199 per person for the first two, and then $49/person after that.

TM:  That's correct.  That way you can get it down to the furnace operators.  Most people bring their managers, but if you could put your two managers in there and then get your six furnace operators in there, that's a really good deal.

DG:  The show covers September 30, October 1 and 2; I assume $49 or $199 gets you into all three days, correct?

TM:  That is correct.  Once you're signed in, you'll have logged in for the entire show, all three days, all six hours each day, to do whatever you'd like to do.

DG:  So, I'm a captive heat treater, I come to the show, I want to walk the exhibit hall.  How do I do it?

FNA Virtual Lounge

TM:  You're going to log in, and as soon as you log in, at the bottom you're going to see a place where you can go to the online networking lounge where you can actually meet people online.  You can click on exhibit hall where when you click on the exhibitor, the exhibitor will pop up.  You can look for them by category.  There are 15 categories.  There are air atmosphere furnaces, vacuum furnaces, control sensors, etc.  Pick what you want and all the exhibitors will pop up.  You can then go in and out of the booths from left to right.  And here's the powerful thing about the system: there's a search engine that you can type in calibration, every discussion, every session and every exhibitor that is involved with calibration and have it in their description is going to pop up for you.  We're making this really easy for you to get to the information, the sessions and/or the exhibitors that you want.

Here is the cool feature that is going to make this dynamic.  When we were building out the system, we were wanting to make the online experience as close to the live experience as possible.  So when you're looking at an exhibitor, and you like what they have to say and you want to speak to someone, you can click exhibit booth contact and that will pop up 6 people, or however many they have in the booth at that time. And when you click on one of them, clicking video call, just like you would a zoom or a skype and they're going to get a request.  They're going to then click yes, and you're going to be talking to someone right on your screen live like you would a zoom call.  You can see them, you can talk, you can virtual handshake if you want.  But here's the other cool factor: If you want to see a presentation they have, they can share their screen with you and you can walk through a short little power point presentation.

Our goal is give attendees the opportunity to see the data that they need to make purchases that they're looking to make over the next 12 months or so.

DG:  Let's wrap up with the details then.  Let's say I want to be an exhibitor.  Where do I need to go?  When do I need to do it?

TM:  Right now, you can go to www.furnacesnorthamerica.com, click on exhibitors and you'll see a space there where you can watch a video to tell you a little bit more about exhibiting at the show, or you can click down at the bottom where it says 'click here to get our booth', fill that out, and we will get your booth set up.  On August 1st, the exhibit hall is going to open for the exhibitors to go out and get their digital booth customized.  They get to pick colors.  They can link up their videos and documents so you can see those.

DG:  And if I'm thinking about attending, bringing my heat treat department, when and where?

TM:  Same thing.  August 1st, go to www.furnacesnorthamerica.com, click on attendees and click on register and then follow the prompts to register your team.

 

 

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.

HTT · Heat Treat Radio: Tom Morrison, CEO of the Metal Treating Institute

Heat Treat Radio #35: Reasons to Attend Furnaces North America with Tom Morrison, CEO of the Metal Treating Institute Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #34: A Discussion with Carl Nicolia, PSNergy President

/ BURNERS & COMBUSTION SYSTEMS TECHNICAL CONTENT, FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO

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, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews Carl Nicolia, President of PSNergy, to learn about how applying efficient combustion can drastically improve the performance of your machines. Click below to hear about high value solutions and where we stand in the "evolution" of combustive techniques.

Click the play button below to listen.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Doug Glenn (DG): Today's topic is combustion.  It is not only an important feature, but also the core to heat treat as the key to high value solutions; that is, according to today's guest, Carl Nicolia (CN), the president of PSNergy.  Carl wrote an article that appeared in a recent edition of Heat Treat Today entitled, The Science of Combustion in an Era of Uncertainty.  Several of the points Carl dealt with in that article, we'll deal with today.  Get ready to read why not all fire is created equal and why your company needs to evolve with the times and take advantage of the recent combustion efficiency technologies.

First page of Carl Nicolia's article from the June Automotive Issue, The Science of Combustion in an Era of Uncertainty: Darwin was right...Evolve or Perish.

DG:  Carl, tell us about your background.

CN:  I had a great career in larger global businesses - folks like GE and Chrysler Corporation.  After that run, I had met several very smart people that had been in the combustion industry for some time and they had some unique ideas on how we could really truly help elevate the performance of heat treating operations.  After doing some homework on the industry, the technology, and the opportunity there, we started PSNergy in May of 2013.  Since then, we have been helping customers, really throughout North America, solve combustion issues and help deliver productivity to combustion operations.  We are primarily focused on radiant tube combustion systems.  We do some open fire work as well.  The team itself brings over 40 years of combustion experience to the table.  We were really formed on innovation around the fundamental sciences, mostly physics and heat treat, and with a huge obsession for customer satisfaction.  We really like to take the approach of becoming part of the customer's team, not really being considered an outside resource, but more of a team member with them, and really develop and play for the long term.  That's the background on how we got into the combustion industry.

DG:  The immediate reason for us talking with you today is because in our June 2020 issue, on page 37, we had a very interesting article or column written by yourself entitled The Science of Combustion in an Era of Uncertainty: Darwin was right, Evolve or Perish.  That was the name of the column.  A little bit provocative and an interesting column.  And, for those who might be reading this at a later point, we are on the, I want to say, the tail end of a Covid-19 pandemic, but some people might say we're in the middle of it.  Nonetheless, that's why the article says, “in an era of uncertainty.”  I want to talk to you a little about that column.  You make this comment in there, and there are a couple of comments I want to ask you about, and then we'll move on to the more substantive stuff.  You say, “All fire is not created equal.”  This is an interesting comment.  What did you mean by that?

CN:  Our team has been having a lot of fun with the caveman references and the whole concept of evolution and when we thought about it, it really did apply well, especially in today's times.  We won't get into whether we're at the beginning, middle or end of the Covid thing, but thinking about going from fire at the end of a club to modern combustion systems is a huge leap forward.  It was a good way for us to think about and highlight the concept that all fire is not created equal.  Just because the burners are firing and the furnace is hot, doesn't mean that you're burning efficiently.  There is a big difference between well-tuned, well-balanced combustion systems, and not well-tuned and well-balanced.  So in that reference, we talk about setting combustion appropriately: getting the right air/fuel ratio can mean the difference between, in a heat treater's case, profitability and loss or high quality and scrap.  Balancing that combustion across the entire system can mean the difference in getting customers and providing the turnaround times that they need. Getting that combustion system balanced and tuned, and keeping that system balanced and tuned, are really essential to “getting the most out of your fire,” if you will.  So we had some fun with that reference.  You will see that carry through some our advertising in the months to come, as well.

(photo source: PSNergy)

DG:  You make one other reference to Charles Darwin and a quote that he mentioned.  The quote is not all that brief, but I wanted you to comment on it, if you could.  It says “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent that survive.  It's the one that is most adaptable to change.  Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.”

CN:  That's a great quote, and again, we're having a little bit of fun with it, but especially in today's world.  I know that many of your readers have been in operation for generations and those companies have found a way to get a little better, a little smarter, every day, every year, and have not gone through Covid-19, but I'm sure other different issues.  I think having them focus on what's critical, really making smart investments, these are the type of things that help move their operations forward, help evolve their operation.  That's the type of evolution we're talking about.

Evolution to us is small, impactful changes that make a big difference.  Although today it might be difficult to imagine, end customers in automotive, construction, and off-highway vehicles are going to be back.  And there is going to be pent-up demand.  Productivity is going to be an issue in the months ahead.  Our end customers, as they come back online and look for suppliers that can meet that rate with high quality and responsiveness, that's going to be a differentiator.  And so, we think that thinking about that evolution now is really important.  Making the changes now while you can and be responsive when the time comes, is the right move for us; that's the evolutionary piece.

DG:  PSNergy, as you've already mentioned, really focuses in on combustion, combustion efficiency, furnace efficiency and that type of thing.  On the second page of this article (page 38 in the June 2020 issue), you mention a case study in there where your crew went in and helped a contract commercial heat treater to improve some efficiency.  Can you run down through that case study quickly and tell us what you guys were able to do to help them adapt and improve the type of fire they had in their organization?

CN:  Sure.  And this is a great story, but it is not a unique story for us.  We have quite a few of these success stories around our products and services.  We had a Midwest contract heat treating company that was interested in the ceramic waste heat recovery inserts.  These are patented devices that we design here at PSNergy.  They go into the exhaust leg of the radiant tube and they capture that energy that is normally lost out the exhaust, keeping that energy inside the furnace.  In the process, it balances the tube temperature and really increases the productivity of the process.

[blocktext align="left"]Their recovery cycle was reduced by 25% ...  And in that total cycle, they dropped gas consumption 5% which eventually led to an increase in output of that furnace by 10% ...  the total cost to implement this was less than $10,000.[/blocktext]So, in this particular example, it was a 9-ft IQ furnace and it had four U-tubes, probably a pretty typical type of furnace that we might see in a lot of the contract heat treating manufacturers, like your audience.  What we did was install inserts in the exhaust legs of the four tubes and then balanced and tuned the system.  This entire process took less than one 8-hour shift to finish.  As you can see, the results were really impressive.  I always like to say at this point, this is not our data, this is customer data.  Their recovery cycle was reduced by 25%.  Now, a recovery cycle is from the time I close the door to the time I start my controlled cycle.  25% reduction.  And in that total cycle, they dropped gas consumption 5% which eventually led to an increase in output of that furnace by 10%.  What we love about this, and this is kind of the theme of the article really, is that the total cost to implement this was less than $10,000.  This is a perfect example of high value solution.  I hate to say 'low cost' because cost is relative, but this is high value.  If I can deliver 25% improvement with less than $10,000, or if I can deliver 10% double-digit output increases for less than $10,000, that's a high value solution.

DG:  At $2500/tube, and you had four tubes you were 'upgrading,' if you will, that's pretty impressive.

CN:  The beauty of this was there were no piping changes, no construction, and no long downtime.  By using the patented technology, the new technology that's out there, combined with our tech-enabled services (balancing and tuning), again using the latest in sensing technology and cloud computing, this customer was able to achieve significant performance improvement.  What's awesome is that this is a pretty common story for us.  When we do this, these are the types of numbers we can achieve.

DG:  We kind of skimmed over a little bit about the inserts.  Let’s take just a minute and make clear what exactly you're providing as far as the inserts  primarily, and the services as well.

CN:  The radiant tube inserts, we like to call them ceramic waste heat recovery devices or waste heat recovery inserts, are primarily silicon carbide and they are in a patented configuration that provides significant improvement in delivering energy through the tube into the load.  And they do that by being the right material, (silicon carbide has a very high emissivity, having the right shape, where we take advantage of radiant energy transfer to the tube because of the shape of the insert, and having a wide open cross-section which does not put a lot of back pressure on the combustion system; we allow the combustion system to breathe.  Inserts have been around for a long time.  The big technology improvement here is having the right material and having it in the right configuration to maximize the amount of energy that is delivered in a radiant tube and minimize the effect on the combustion system.

DG:  And are these inserts only for U-tubes?

CN:  No, they can be applied on any radiant tube.  We've applied them on straight tubes (or I-tubes), U-tubes, Trident® tubes, and W-tubes.

DG:  You talk in the article about combustion efficiency and furnace efficiency.  Can you elaborate on that and the difference between the two?

CN:  We think about this relatively broadly.  Combustion efficiency is getting the most energy out of the fuel you purchase, and ensure that you continue to get that same level of performance.  This is happening at the combustion system level, the burners, if you will.  This goes back to achieving optimal air/fuel ratios.  And it is so important, yet often overlooked by a lot of people.  The difference between 7% excess oxygen in the exhaust and 3% excess oxygen is significant.  If you're at 7% excess oxygen, you're delivering 20% less energy to the furnace than you are at 3%.  20% is a huge, huge number.  Especially when you're talking about the core process for heat treating operations, making heat.  I think often times we forget that in heat treating, combustion is the core process.  Anytime we're running through a heat treat operation, you have to have optimal combustion.  And there are high value,  easily implemented solutions out there that help you maintain and achieve the optimum combustion.

When we think about furnace efficiency, furnace efficiency is what our customers get paid for - getting energy from the combustion system to the product.  And how well we do that, in our view, is furnace efficiency.  Think about it this way:  You could have a perfectly balanced and tuned combustion system (those four tubes on our example furnace can be tuned perfectly), but we can let, in that system, 40% of the energy escape out of the exhaust.  So combustion efficiency might be high, but furnace efficiency is not optimal.  That's where we think about implementing the ceramic waste heat recovery devices, for example.  You could talk about textured tubes or bubble tubes as another example to help you get that energy from the combustion system into the load.  Getting more of the energy produced in efficient combustion for that product being processed – that's the name of the game, and that's furnace efficiency as we see it.

DG:  You and I were talking about a recent report that came out from ArcelorMittal regarding their “green movement.”  Can you recap that, and maybe hit on the ability for small companies to also embrace the technology that some of these bigger companies are able to embrace?

CN:  We found this very informative. ArcelorMittal issued their 2019 “integrated report,” where they discuss their corporate responsibility and sustainability initiatives in the US.  They have ten sustainability development outcomes, and energy management is one of those ten key outcomes.  ArcelorMittal highlighted the development of a low-cost oxygen sensor for furnaces that reduce fuel consumption by allowing plants to see that combustion performance and then tune for optimization.  This goes back to our discussion:  Furnace combustion performance is the core to these operations, and they're highlighting the value of getting combustion balanced and tuned correctly and keeping it correct.

Not everyone listening and reading, I'm sure, has the resources of ArcelorMittal, so luckily, PSNergy has developed this technology for everyday heat treating operations and any one of us can now apply this.  In fact, the same leading edge sensing technology and cloud computing technology is what our service team uses to deliver our combustion engineering services, or balance and tuning, and that is also incorporated into our combustion monitoring and alerting system.  We like to call that CMA.  And installing CMA on your furnace is like having a dedicated technician taking combustion measurements every day.  If something is starting to go out of tune, actions can be taken immediately before furnace performance is affected and alerts can be sent through the system.  Daily reports are issued on combustion and so you know combustion is running well.  And if it's not, you're deploying resources to get that out.

DG:  So this combustion monitoring and alerting system is a cloud-based system?

CN:  Yes, it is, but fundamentally, it is a sensor.  It's oxygen monitoring and pressure monitoring that is installed on each individual tube of the furnace that records excess oxygen in the stack just as if you would stand there as a technician with a handheld meter, but this is all connected through the cloud which allows it to be accessible, which allows it to store the data for future trend analysis.  We've been able to use that tool to identify failing motorized control valves, declining performance on combustion air fans, etc.  There is so much that you can see over and above when you're starting to look at data over time versus a single point in time and that's where the cloud piece comes in.  It starts with pulling the sample from the right spot in situ from the exhaust and having the highest level of sensing technology available on the oxygen side and then sending all of that up to the cloud for the analysis for the reporting.  It basically is a tech standing there taking measurements every day and then you're able to then get a report that says this is where our combustion is, and I can take steps to do that.

DG:  I've got a question about that.  So you've got 24/7, 365 monitoring of the system, cloud-based, the reports are coming back to the people in the company only – and only to those people that need to know.  Are these things that you guys are alerted to so that you call if something goes wrong, or is it basically just held in-house?

CN:  It can be either.  You have the option of adding our team into it and we can provide input.  The one thing we have decided though is any time the system is deployed, we never want to see that system not functioning properly.  We keep a close eye on it.  The combustion measurements are only a small piece.  There are also a lot of help measurements around the system itself, so we're able to keep an eye on the system.  If something started to go wrong from a system standpoint, we haven't seen that yet, but if it ever does, we're able to send our technicians out to make sure that you don't get a break in that monitoring.

DG:  Have you had any issues with companies being concerned about cybersecurity?

[blocktext align="right"]Get it right and keep it right and then get the most out of the gas that you purchase. Stop throwing away energy. [/blocktext]CN:  Not yet.  We deal with that in two ways.  Number one is that the data we're taking is relatively agnostic.  I'm going to see basically pressures and excess oxygen readings and it's not really associated with anything else.  Typically, when we get an output through the customer's system, that is usually on the other side of their firewall so the system security is in place and we can have a clean channel out to our cloud.  When customers are uncomfortable with that, we'll use cell technology to deliver that, so there is no interconnectivity to their system.  We have thought that through.  Some customers are more uncomfortable than others, but we've done it both ways, where we've connected through a portal in their system to get out to the internet and then we've also connected through cellular.

DG:  Is it possible to have a completely contained system where there is no internet connectivity?

CN:  No.  Because a lot of the calculations and analysis is done in the cloud.  It's not to say that we haven't been asked for that, and we are working on local displays for let's say a technician that just wants to walk up to the furnace and see how things are running; we do have provisions for that as well.

DG:  “All fire is not created equal” we know that, so it sounds like PSEnergy has got some good options for people to help improve and maintain not only combustion efficiency but also furnace efficiency.  The example you had in the article was for a commercial heat treater, but obviously this also applies to anybody who's doing any type of combustion heating, captive heat treaters, manufacturers or commercial.

What exactly would you emphasize to these manufacturers with their own in-house heat treating, or in the commercials, about the importance of combustion in the heat treating process?

CN:  Combustion is really the core of their process.  If I could leave you with a message that there are high value easily implemented solutions for achieving and maintaining that optimal combustion, then I think we've given the listeners and readers a little bit of value here.  Get your combustion right and keep it right, and then look for that technology that is available out there that can help you get the most out of every BTU that you burn.

DG:  Exactly.  And the payback is almost a no-brainer in a lot of situations.  Obviously, each situation is going to be unique, but the example you gave in the article, the payback was enormously good.  It's certainly worth investigating.

CN:  It is.  It's always worth investigating when it's about achieving more output.  When you can achieve more output and ring the cash register more and create more opportunities for selling additional product or new product capacity, those are easier ROIs.  If we're just looking at wanting to save fuel, well sure, that pencils out in that case, it's just not the same sort of three-month turnaround or as quick.

In our case, we recommend three areas:  Get combustion right and keep it right, with a tech-enabled service team and monitoring.  I really wanted to point out, and we've heard this a hundred times– if it's not measured, it's not sustained.  The core of heat treating is combustion, yet very few of us actually measure the performance of combustion.  We might measure the output (temperature), but we don't measure excess oxygen, which is really the necessary metric to achieve the efficiency.  The big steel example there kind of guides us.  You should never wonder how well your combustion system is running.  You should know with data.  That's the core of your process.

So, get it right and keep it right and then get the most out of the gas that you purchase.  Stop throwing away energy.  Utilize these high value, easily implemented solutions and get the most out of it.

And the piece that we really didn't talk about was- train your team.  There are combustion trainings out there.  Ours is specifically geared towards combustion and really for heat treating operations, but train your team and talk about a common understanding and a common language around combustion. That dispels a lot of  myths around combustion and exposes the team to the latest technologies and best practices.

Lastly, keep reading and listening to Heat Treat Today and Heat Treat Radio because that's the best way to stay informed on the latest technologies.  You've got to keep up on it.  All kidding aside, it is a really great way, the information that you guys provide is significant towards staying up on the technology.

DG:  I appreciate that shameless promotion there.  ~chuckles~

If someone wanted to get a little more information, what are you comfortable giving out as far as contact information for people to get a hold of you?

CN:  My email is cnicolia@psnergy.com and my phone number is 814-504-2326.

DG: So Carl, thanks very much for joining us today.

CN: Doug thank you, I appreciate the opportunity to speak about the technologies.

 

Read the original article, The Science of Combustion in and Era of Uncertainty, here.

 

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.

HTT · Heat Treat Radio: Carl Nicolia, President of PSNergy

 

Heat Treat Radio #34: A Discussion with Carl Nicolia, PSNergy President Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #33: A Discussion with Jeff Fuller and Professor Richard Sisson from CHTE

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO

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, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, publisher of Heat Treat Today, discusses the heat treating resources available to members of the Center for Heat Treating Excellence (CHTE) as well as the background and current look of this collaborative endeavor. Featured in this conversation is member and current chairman of CHTE, Jeffery Fuller, metallurgy manager at Amsted Rail Company and Professor Richard Sisson, key heat treat researcher and lecturer at Worchester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).

Click the play button below to listen.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Doug Glenn (DG): Today we are talking about the Center for Heat Treating Excellence (CHTE) and the role it plays in connecting researchers and heat treaters across North America.  The topic is especially relevant to manufacturers with their own in-house heat treat departments who want to know how to join innovative research with their everyday practical heat treat needs.  One of CHTE's members and current chairman, Jeffery Fuller (JF), metallurgy manager at Amsted Rail Company Inc. with the Brenco division in Petersburg, VA, will talk about his experience at CHTE and the diverse projects that the center has undertaken.  We will also hear from Richard Sisson (RS), the key heat treat researcher and lecturer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), as he shares his input on both his history and the present operations of the center.

DG:  Jeff, can you share with our readers where you stand in the world of heat treat?

JF:  I got my Bachelors degree in materials engineering at Virginia Tech.  My first job was actually at an iron foundry.  Then I transferred to a manufacturing company in upstate New York and there I was exposed to a lot of heat treating very, very quickly.  I was heat treating tool

Screenshot from Amsted Rail PRECISION MANUFACTURING Video. (photo source: www.amstedrail.com)

steels, I was heat treating stainless steels, I was heat treating copper alloys and so I had a lot of experience with a wide range of atmospheres, a wide range of types of furnaces and a wide range of materials when I was working at that company.  That was my first real exposure to heat treatment, particularly the tool steel part where I was working with a wide range of tool steels and we had a couple of Ipsen batch furnaces that we were using.  It was like going to metallurgy school all over again because I had such a wide variety of things to work with.  After that I spent several years working at a specialty steel manufacturer in upstate New York as well.  I ended up transferring over to Brenco.  Brenco used to be its own independent company in the mid '90s and this was where I spent the bulk of my career.  I've been here since 1995 and we have a large captive heat treating operation here and we primarily produce bearings for the rail industry.  We are doing a lot of carburizing.  We have pressure furnaces, pit furnaces, and batch hardening furnaces, so I've spent a lot of time dealing with carburization and some of the idiosyncrasies of the carburizing process.  We've seen how to make parts well and some things that don't make parts quite as well.  Brenco is now part of what is called Amsted Rail.

DG:  Tell us about your involvement in your current position with the Center for Heat Treating Excellence.

JF:  Sure!  I was looking for an opportunity to branch out and get some more support for heat treating research and other kinds of research into heat treating issues.  We are actually a fairly small company, even though the Amsted Group is a large company with many employees.  We are also spread out in many locations and a lot of our locations are fairly small.  Our particular location here in Petersburg, VA is only

CHTE Event with Members (photo source: www.wpi.edu/CHTE)

about 400 employees and the metallurgical engineering group consists of myself and another metallurgist, and then our lab technicians.  There are occasions where we run into issues where we were looking for a little more support and the opportunity to engage with other people that might be able to answer questions and solve problems that were beyond our particular knowledge.  So we started looking for a group that could help us out, whether it was going to be just a professor at a university or some other kind of group, and we became aware of the industry university consortium type model.  So we started looking around and wanted to see if there was a consortium that would suit our needs.  And we found a few.  But what drew our attention to the CHTE up at Worcester Polytech was the fact that it was focused specifically on heat treating, that it was run by physical metallurgists and, to be perfectly honest, one of the main draws for us was that the membership fee is very, very reasonable compared to some of the other consortiums that we've talked with.  When we put all of those things together, we wanted to give this a try and see if we think this is the kind of thing that is going to be beneficial for us.  That was around 2015, so I guess my company has been a member for about 5 years.  I was asked to join the board of directors and become the chairman of the board of directors in 2018, so I've been chairman for my fourth meeting as chairman.

DG:  Let's move to Rick Sisson.  Rick, you sort of represent the research end of this collaboration with your work at WPI.  Why don't you give us an understanding of how CHTE operates and also why it might be helpful for heat treaters?

RS:  The mission is to provide a research home for the heat treating industry in the United States, even though we have had international members, but to provide a home to work on current issues in the heat treating industry.  We also provide graduates who do go to work in the industry.  We have some undergraduates who work with us, but it is mostly MS and PhD students and a lot of post docs who work on this as well.

The Center for Heat Treating Excellence is an industrial sponsored and led consortium.  We conduct industry-proposed and industry-selected research on topics that are important to the heat treating industry today.  Our organization is focused on timely research to immediately support the industry's needs.  We are made of up of large and medium OEMs as well as heat treat suppliers and furnaces manufacturers (I can give you the full list of companies later), but it's their collective wisdom that really guides the project selections and implementation.  The process we use is- the companies propose the research, they work with me and we development a project plan to the board, all of which is people from industry.  You get my input, but it’s projects and industries which is important to them.

DG:  So this is a primarily academic/industrial partnership?

RS:  Yes.  We use our relationship with these companies to get some fairly large federal and military money to continue the research which support research that is going on at the Center, but research within the Center is driven by the industry and their needs.

DG:  Is CHTE a Worcester Polytechnic Institute entity?  Is it owned by them?

RS:  Actually, a group called the Metal Process Institute, which is several centers, the oldest one being the Advanced Casting Research Lab that's been led by Diran Apelian for over 30 years, and that is the model we use that he developed working with the aluminum casting industry.  There is the Center for Heat Treating Excellence.  We also have CR3 which is the Center for Resource Recovery and Recycling which is part of that, but it is also funded by the government directly through the National Science Foundation.  We also are a part of an ASM initiative that is looking in data: How do you collect data, analyze data? We work with the University of Connecticut and the University of Rochester on that.

DG:  So from 30,000 feet then, the Center for Heat Treat Excellence is an industry/academic partnership has obviously some ties with government funding as well.  WPI first.  Underneath that is an entity called the Metal Processing Institute and then the Center for Heat Treat Excellence is part of that.

RS:  Yes.  And if you look at all the companies that are members of what we call the MPI (metal process institute), it has been as many as one hundred.

DG:  Let's talk specifically about how the Center for Heat Treating Excellence got started.  How long ago was it, the founding members, and things of that sort.

RS:  It's was started about 16 years ago and it was an idea from the ASM heat treat society R&D as part of a planning entity, and they had determined that heat treating needed a research home in the United States.  If you look around, a lot of the universities have a little bit here and a little bit there, but they determine that.  The whole effort was really led by Bob Gassler and Bruce Boardman at John Deere, but also with a lot of other OEMs, people from CAT, people from the automotive as well as the aerospace industries.

DG:  You said Bill Bernard from Surface Combustion, correct?

RS:  Yes, Bill Bernard.  Bill is mostly retired, but his son B.J. is the president and Ben Bernard is one of the other head guys there.

We had a lot of support from the major induction companies, besides the regular furnace companies, and the quenching fluid providers when we were getting started.

DG:  If you're a member of the organization, what's the typical calendar look like for you in a year?  How often do members meet?  How often do they have to do work outside of meeting times?

RS:  We have two review meetings a year; one in June and another one in December.  In addition, almost every member company is either a member the board or a member of the project selection committee and they meet periodically by conference call or by zoom to conduct business when necessary.  The project selection committee is the one who meets the most because they need to collect all the project proposals and get together and discuss them and make their determination about what would be the most interest. And then they decide, is this something you guys could do; does this fit into whatever capability you have?

Center for Heat Treating Excellence from WPI on Vimeo.

DG:  So Jeff, what perspective can you give us on how the Center of Heat Treating Excellence benefits members and their companies?

JF:  There are a lot of things benefits that with being part of the CHTE.  But one of the things you hear people talk about the most is they like the networking that happens at the meetings.  We meet twice a year, once usually in June and once in December, and there are usually a couple of social events associated with that, and a lot of people get to talk with colleagues that are in other industries and things and there is a lot of sharing that goes on.  Of course people are always careful to watch their proprietary information and be noncompetitive and things like that.  But the simple truth is, there are not that many times you get to get a bunch of heat treaters together, put them in a room and let them talk.  I've had some very, very good conversations with people that are in industries that are very different than mine but happen to have a lot of the same problems.  I've talked with some people, for example, that make parts for heavy trucks and we've been able to sit down and say, “Hey, you know, we both have the same problem.  Let's share some information here.”

CHTE Members (photo source: www.wpi.edu/CHTE)

Some of the other benefits people have if they're members of CHTE, is first of all, the staff at CHTE is available for phone consults to members at any time.  So for example, if I'm scratching my head over a particular issue and I'm not quite sure how to approach it, or if there is some information that I need, I can all CHTE and get a hold of Dr. Sisson or Dr. Zhang or whoever, and I can say, “What do you guys think about this?” Or they may say, “We don't have your answer, but we have some modeling software and we can run that for you.  Send us some information and we'll run the model for you and get you the results.”  So you have this kind of thing where the staff is available for you to consult and that's basically at no charge.

The other benefit is if you say, “I have a particular research project that I want to do, but I don't really want this to be a part of the consortium because this is going to be proprietary, something just for me.”  Then we're able to engage the resources of Worcester Polytech without having to pay any overhead fees.  If you've ever looked at any university research contracts, the overhead fees can be substantial.  So it's a nice discount if someone wants to get something like that done, they can get some directed research and get a pretty substantial discount on what would be if you went to another university where you don't already have a standing relationship.

DG:  I'd like to know how the CHTE projects are managed and distributed to benefit CHTE members.  Could you nail down or discuss one or may two research projects that have been most helpful to you to Amsted?

JF:  Ok, sure!  One of the projects has been helpful to us and was actually one of the ones that drew my attention early on.  Worcester Polytech was looking at creating a carburizing calculator, which they call CarbTool.  I had worked with some of the commercially available carburizing calculators that you can get out there and they're okay; they all have their own little benefits to them.  But what really attracted me to CarbTool was the fact that it had more detailing.  I could put in different geometries, I could put in a lot of different kind of processing steps, and I was able to get more information out of the CarbTool than out of some of the more commercial software packages that were out there.  In fact, it was so interesting to me, that at one point I actually went to them and said, “Hey guys, I really like this, but the user interface is a little clunky.”  And so they got me in touch with one of the computer science people up at Worcester and we helped make the user interface much more usable and we went through several versions of that.  Now it is a tool that is available for members; they can all download that and use that license for free.  They are working on another one now that's going to be for nitrocarburizing.  It's kind of nice because in addition to the straight research projects (we've done projects on induction tempering, a research project on how to extend furnace fixture life and we're currently doing some projects on distortion control and we did some on nondestructed testing), we also have some practical projects where you end up with a tool that you can actually use going forward.

Current research project, "CarboTool" (photo source: www.wpi.edu/chte)

DG:  The CarbTool that you were talking about, and the one that might be coming around for nitriding, is it commercially available to nonmembers?

JF:  No.  It is not available at all to nonmembers.  At various times we've talked about it; in other words, should we look at trying to commercialize some of this or should we not?  We've had some discussions with some other nonprofits about it, asking if there was some way maybe some of our research could be distributed through other channels.  But the truth is, the consortium exists for the benefit of the consortium members, so we have to be careful about that.  We want to make sure that people are getting their value, and that we aren't giving things away.  The consortium members paid for it and they have a right to it.  People that haven't paid for it, don't.  We haven't really looked at how we would price that out and that's not really our model.  Our model really is: join consortium, participate with us, help sponsor the research and then we all get to share the benefits.

DG:  Dr. Sisson, who is involved in these projects and the programs?

RS:  First, the membership kind of goes up and down with the economy.  In general, the current memberships include a new member ArcelorMittal which is a very large steel company.  Amsted Rail.  We've always had ASM international as a member.  Bodycote has always been a big supporter being a very large heat treating operation.  Then we have Caterpillar, Cummins, Fiat Chrysler, John Deere, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, and those kind of OEMs.  We have DANTE Solutions which does heat treat modeling and then the Thermo-Calc software that does all the thermodynamics in phase productions.  We have GKN Sinter Metals that does a lot of work with us recently, because we're doing more in additive manufacturing.  A new focus that has emerged over the last 2 or 3 years is in post-processing of additives.

DG:  So Jeff, have those relationships with suppliers in the industry been helpful?

JF:  I think it has.  And I think that's a really great point.  We are always looking for new members and for greater diversity in our membership base.  The more members we get, the more projects we can take on and the more work we can do.  But one of the things we find that is really great is, for example, we have a project right now where we need a particular kind of access to a piece of equipment in order to do part of the testing.  And one of our equipment manufacturers says, “Yes, we can do that.  We can put that piece of equipment together and you guys can use that for purposes of this test.”  We've had this happen both with the kind of the more traditional heat treating equipment, we've had that done with some of the induction heat treating equipment and we've had the ability to pair up with certain members.  When we create a project, the project selection committee goes out to the different members and they ask, “What do you want to work on?  What is of interest to you in the industry?”  We get a lot of different ideas and then they look at the degree of interest in the different ideas.  We also look at the diversity of the ideas, because what we want to make sure of is that we don't completely drive projects in one direction and then leave some of our membership out in the cold.  So, we look at the diversity of the projects and we look at the interest in the projects and we also look at the relative success of the project.  Can we be successful with this project or is it completely off the wall?  We'll then come up with a project scope and then a project description.  Then what ends up happening is a focus group is put on that project.  What we will do is put people on that focus group that have a high interest in the project and also have resources to provide for the project.  For example, we had a project here recently where we have one member who is interested in something that is induction related and we also have an induction company that is one of our members as well. So, we’re going to put them on that focus group and they can work together directly along with the WPI staff to help drive that project forward and bring it to a conclusion.  It's great, because instead of us sitting around going, “Gee, who's going to do that?”, we've already got people in the room associated with the project that will know how to get things done, or may even already have the equipment or the resources that we need to get something done.

CHTE's Distortion & Residual Stress Research from WPI on Vimeo.

DG:  So you at least have an implicit commitment already to provide whatever resources need to be provided to get the task done.

JF:  Right.  Now it's subject to cost and things like that, as every company has their own resource constraints, but yes, it's been very successful so far.  It's because we have that breadth and diversity of membership.  If we had only users, then we would be much more dependent on having to use only the facilities at WPI or only commercial services that we had to hire to accomplish tasks that we didn't already have.  If you think about it, if we're doing research, we probably don't have that equipment.  If we already had that equipment or that set-up, we'd already be using it.  Just by the very nature of it, we often talking about things we don't have.  If it was just users, it would take us a lot longer to get things done and it would be a lot more difficult.  Having the equipment manufacturers and fluid suppliers and things like that involved is a big, big, big help.

DG:  Rick, when all the research is done, frankly, who owns it?  And how is it shared?

RS:  Formally, WPI owns it.  We hold it confidential mostly.  And a company can use anything that has been developed on these projects royalty free.  If we decide we want to pursue a patent, and even if we get a patent, then they can use this royalty free.  In cases where WPI doesn't pursue a patent, then a company can.  We have a semiformal process to say, “I'd like to get a patent on what you guys did.”  Then you've got to let the other members know and see how that's going to work out.  But we rarely have any issues with doing that.  So it's owned by WPI but the content is strictly for the members.

JF:  And that's my understanding as well.  We had an interesting project a few years ago where we came up with a really great process for doing a kind of treatment that would help extend fixture life.  Turns out, none of our members are in that fixture business.  Some discussions were held, but it didn't actually go anywhere.  We still have this knowledge how it could be done, how it might be done.  But, a lot of the other things are much more immediately available, if you will.

One of the other things people are going to have to remember is that if they're going to join a consortium, every project isn't going to be relevant to what you do.  For example, a few years ago we did a big project on induction tempering.  Fascinating project.  I don't do any induction heat treating.  I learned a lot by going through and having access to all of that information and research, but that doesn't affect my position here because I don't use induction heat treat in this job currently.  But there are a lot of other things.  When I go to my boss and we talk about the justification for our membership, one of the things I talk about is, of the projects, how many of them that are current are relevant to what we do and what's coming up and what's in the pipeline?  Because they're not 100% going to be projects that are going to mean something to me.  But that's okay, because we're all benefiting.  Some of the carburizing projects are beneficial to me but aren't beneficial to the induction people, but we're all working on it together and we all get benefit out of it.

DG:  Roughly how many projects are going on at one time?

JF:  Right now we have two main projects and one sort of a side project.  This is completely based on how many members we have.  Right now, we're running around 14 members in the consortium, some big companies and some smaller companies (you can see the member list on the CHTE website).  If we had 25 members, we'd probably be running three or four projects.

DG:  And do those projects tend to last a year?  Two years?

JF:  They tend to last usually two years as a project length.  It takes awhile to get a team together, get things moving, start getting results and then put everything together and do the report, so typically it's about two years long.

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 #33: A Discussion with Jeff Fuller and Professor Richard Sisson from CHTE Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #32: A Discussion with Jean-François Cloutier, Nitrex CEO

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO

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, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews Nitrex CEO, Jean-François Cloutier, to hear about how Nitrex has been able to expand and rebrand their company while creating mutually beneficial relationships between itself and end-users at a global level. Click below to learn more about the “art of the deal," strength-based management, and global growth.

Click the play button below to listen.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Doug Glenn:  Jean-François (JF) Cloutier, the CEO of Nitrex, will be sharing his background on how his company reenvisioned themselves in the industry, implementing six initiatives resulting in a transformative rebranding of the entire organization.  JF will also talk about what “the art of the deal” looks like and what a mutually beneficial business relationship looks like with GM Enterprises.

Let's start with some background before getting into Nitrex's synergy with GM Enterprises and “the art of the deal.”  JF, let's hear a little bit about your background.

Jean-Francois Cloutier,
Nitrex CEO

JF:  I've been in the industrial world for many years.  I worked for Bombardier a Canadian train and planes manufacturer, for roughly 17 years.  I had my own business for a few years before that.  I then worked for the rail division of Caterpillar called Progress Rail; it was acquired by Caterpillar in 2006.  I worked for them for 3 years.  I wanted to be closer to the family, so I came back and started at Nitrex in April of last year.  I've worked in different countries and in different places for both Bombardier and Caterpillar, from Canada and the US to Mexico and China.  I've worked in supply chain for some years, so we were involved in supply chain at the time with heat treating services.  I was not an expert, but I was familiar with the industry and knew some of the processes, so I decided to join Nitrex.

DG:  It's been interesting to watch over the last year or so, to see the progress made.  It seems to me you've got a really solid management team in place.

JF:  I think it's a well-balanced team between people of experience from the industry that worked at Nitrex for many years.  Obviously, Michel Korwin [President at Nitrex Metal and United Process Controls at Nitrex Metal Inc.] staying on board as an advisor was very good for me as he's got tremendous experience.  There is Chris Morawski [Special Acquisitions Advisor at Nitrex Metal Inc.] as well, and Paul Oleszkiewicz [Vice President at Nitrex Metal Inc.]. So we have people with lots of years of experience.  Even a gentleman like Jason Orosz [President of Heat Treating Services at Nitrex Metal Inc.] that you probably know.  Jason has been in the industry for many years and his family business has been involved with Nitrex for many years.  Jason is relatively young, he's not even 40 and he's got probably 20 years already in the business.  Also, we brought in some people.  Olivier Caurette [President at United Process Controls] who is a guy who used to work for Bombardier as well in different fields and different countries; he's quite a global guy.  There is Elizabeth D. [Vice President Global Human Resources at Nitrex Metal] from Caterpillar.  I think we have a solid team in place.  I mean, the team was very good before, as well.  But with the direction we wanted to take, with the growth, and becoming a bit more global, we felt the need to bring in people with global experience too.

DG:  Let's talk a little bit about the business units that currently exist in Nitrex.  I heard the webinar, but why don't you run down through the basic business units of Nitrex.  We'll talk about them independently, but let's get an overview first.

(source: Nitrex)

JF:  Absolutely. Nitrex was founded in 1984 and it grew throughout time organically, but also through acquisitions, and that's how the company, in the end, became vertically integrated with 3 divisions, especially UPC (United Process Controls) will now be branded UPC Marathon, as you probably heard on the webinar.  UPC grew through multiple acquisitions, Process-Electronic, and Marathon Atmosphere Engineering.  The company Nitrex grew throughout time through acquisitions, and more recently with GM Enterprises.  This is a unique position in the market.  There are not that many companies vertically integrated with design and manufacturing capabilities like furnaces (that's NTS), heat treating services which is what we call HTS, and United Process Controls (now UPC Marathon) with controls, software and different equipment for the heat treating industry.  So, this position is quite unique, and for us, it has been working very well because the goal of the company, or how we present ourself, and that's a bit where the rebranding came from.  We presented ourselves as a solutions provider.  It may look very wide, but what it means is that we can go beyond selling a product, so we have experts in different fields of metallurgy and obviously people with lots of experience in heat treating.  But, we can go beyond selling a furnace or we can go beyond selling a component.  When we're approached by a customer usually, unless they want to buy specific components, most of the time there is a challenge, there is a problem to solve.  We have to understand the problem, where it's coming from, what's the application and that kind of brings us into understanding a little bit more the component or the application and that's one of the reasons why we consider ourselves a solution provider.  We can work with OEMs and understand the problematic and go beyond the equipment itself.  Then we can sell them the proper equipment or upload the proper recipe to the furnace, if it's a problem related to that, but in any case, that's why we consider ourself a solution provider.  Since we started to grow internationally, and after the acquisition of GM Enterprises, presenting ourselves to the market as a solution provider, we looked at how the company was positioned in the market, in terms of corporate image. We realized that it was probably time to rebrand some of our brand and present ourself to the market with a more accurate image of who we are, and that's what generated the discussions around it's probably time to rebrand.  We had the new management team on board and the company, after putting together a strategic plan, definitively we saw a need to diversify as well.  So all of this together supported the need to rebrand.

DG:  Let's talk a little bit more specifically about your acquisition of GM Enterprises.  Address the thinking behind that and the vision that lies ahead for that company.

JF:  It is in line with our philosophy of being in the complexity, high range heat treating provider.  We're are in a big niche.  It is two words that may look contrary, but we are in gas nitriding, and we were known for gas nitriding, but we were a little bit more than that; we have other processes internally.  But to go back to the reasoning of acquiring GM Enterprises.  GM Enterprises is a lead in their field in the US and it was very complimentary in terms of product for its value with what we have.  GM was mainly focused on the American business and Nitrex was more global, so it's a good compliment for GM and for us.  And the other thing, and the main thing really, is to be in the vacuum and get in the segment where we were less present, which was the aerospace segment, as well as MIM, defense, and 3D printing.  We were not so much in those fields.  Nitrex is more industrial, automotive and a slight presence in aerospace, but now with the acquisition of GM, we reinforced those segments.  That was a good compliment to the product portfolio, a good compliment in terms of market, and also in terms of company values, were quite aligned.  Both companies were born with an entrepreneur mindset and grew like that throughout the years, and despite the difference in size, Nitrex is larger in size than GM, those values are still present in both companies.  I think it was a good fit, and the timing was right.  I'm glad that Suresh Jhawar, the previous owner decided to stay with us, because obviously he's a library of information and knowledge, same as Michel Korwin and Chris Morawski.  So to your point about the management team, yes, it is a good management team and I think it reinforces that point.

DG:  I've known Suresh for many, many years and he is a good guy.  I do like his entrepreneurial spirit.  Let's talk about “the art of the deal.”  Very briefly, can you give us a timeline and about how the deal came about with GM.

Mrs. Veena Jhawar, G-M Enterprises COO; Mr. Jean-François Cloutier, Nitrex CEO; Mr. Suresh Jhawar, G-M Enterprises President

JF:  The discussion started last fall and it went pretty quick and smooth.  Suresh and his team are good negotiators as well, so we had some good discussions, but honestly, I think it went pretty well and the deal was completed at the beginning of this year.  We started to look at the synergies between the two companies and one of them was definitely the potential to sell GM products in other geographies where Nitrex is a bit stronger.  That's why I was saying it was a complement to our product portfolio, but also in terms of market.  We started to work on that and started to train our people internally, both the GM sales team as well as vice versa on both products.  The Nitrex sales network will definitely benefit GM products, so there is great potential in Europe and China as well.  Even though GM has sold in the past in China, at Nitrex we have a sales force there.  We have a plant as well as opening a new one in the (15:45) of China, in Ningbo, more precisely.  We're expanding in China so that will benefit definitely GM and other products of Nitrex.

I think the future of GM is expanding in geographies where the products were not necessarily sold that much in the past; so leverage the sales network of Nitrex and share the knowledge internally between the two companies.  GM Enterprises remains an entity like it was but is now part of the larger group Nitrex.

DG:  Can you address the management team over there now?  I understand Pontus [Pontus Nilsson] is staying on but you've brought somebody else new into the GM position.

JF:  Yes, thank you for asking.  We've brought in a gentleman by the name of Larry Jackson.  Larry is a longtime aerospace guy.  He's been in the aerospace industry for many years in charge of various operations.  It wouldn't be a bad idea one day to organize something with him, if you have an interest.  But, Larry has been managing aerospace operations for a long time.  He joined us about 3 months ago.  That was part of the plan when we acquired the company that eventually Suresh would want to start phasing out gradually despite his long years of experience, he is still full of energy and wants to stay around.  In terms of succession planning, it was important to bring someone who would want to stay with us for a few years, so we brought in Larry.  He has brought in as well a supply chain manager and started to make some improvement in the operation.  It is going very well and he is well-integrated as well with Nitrex so operation, best practices, procedures, and processes that we were following at Nitrex are now being implemented at GM.  So far it is a successful integration.

DG:  You've got a very interesting, succinct, very powerful tag line: “Mastering Strength Worldwide.” You've already talked a little bit about some expansion going on in the Ningbo in China, maybe address for the readers some other things that might be going on, most notably, presence in Europe, Poland and any other places that you anticipate growth worldwide, maybe with the exception of North America, which we can address independently.

(source: Nitrex)

JF:  We're expanding our plant in Poland or starting to talk about expansion.  The plant in Poland is our flagship in terms of design and manufacturing of furnaces.  About a year ago when I joined, well, the team before me had started to look at the expansion potential or possibility, so we moved forward with that project.  That is going to double our capacity.  Right now, obviously, we're going through some challenges in the economy in general, however, the business is good for Nitrex and we still see lots of potential to grow, so we decided to pursue the expansion of that plant which should be completed before the end of this calendar year.  That is a very important project for us.  The other one I mentioned is Ningbo in China.  We already have a site in Wuxi, China, west of Shanghai, there is some demand in that area of China, and others. But we're starting with Ningbo after discussing with our partners in China, our team there, as well as some customers, we decided to move forward with the expansion.  That should be ready some time in the Fall as well.  Again, in line of strength and growth, I'll explain a bit where we're coming from with Mastering Strength.  In terms of expansion, we see ourselves expanding in China; in Poland, which is our flagship site, we'll continue to grow.

We are investing in the US, as well, in our Chicago plant, which is an important operation for us.  We signed, as well, a rep agreement with a company in India which was a geography where we were not so present, so we're making some steps into India as well.  So far, it's a story of growth.  There might be some other acquisitions.  I cannot talk about it right now, but we're still looking at growing.

DG:  These expansions internationally, the Ningbo and Poland, are they for heat treatment services, are they for equipment, or are they for controls?

JF:  Good question.  It is for NTS, Nitrex Turnkey Systems, so for furnaces, as well as United Process Controls.  We're making more space for both divisions.  And I should think we have some heat treating services capacity there, but the floor is mainly used for furnaces as well as for UPC.  So that site is becoming our main site within Europe to supply our customers.

DG:  Is there anything more you want to address as far as growth internationally?

JF:  No, I think on the international side, we talked about India, China, which we are seeing now a strong comeback in China after the situation being a bit more under control in terms of Covid-19, so there's a rebound in China.  So far, Nitrex has gone through the storm quite well.  This company has been through different storms in the past, like in 2008/2009 for instance, and because this integration of three different divisions, I think that's one of the key success factors of this integration.  When customers sometimes delay some decisions, then our other divisions do well, so we compensate.  The synergy between the three and now we will integrate a little bit more a “cell network” between the three companies, so that will help us going through future storms, if any, but we will be even better prepared on the global scale to face that kind of storm.  Also, in terms of manufacturing capability, we have the capability to manufacture in different sites inside the Nitrex group, so that should help us get through potential storms in the future.

DG: You were talking about plant expansion and Chicago.  Let's use that as a segue into discussing North America plans a little more.

JF: In the US, we have different HTS – site heat treating services – with UPC. We also have United Process Control as one facility in Milwaukee.  But, we are investing in our Chicago site with Nitrex equipment but some other processes as well that we will be talking in the near future that's underway.  We're expanding the infrastructure: Chicago is a good location for us, well located close to different industries.  We're serving industry all companies as well as automotive jobs there, so we saw the need to expand there.  This site, and others, will also grow.  We equip some of our sites with our own equipment, with Nitrex equipment.  We have other processes, although most of our sites are, in general, equipped mainly with Nitrex gas nitriding furnaces.  That's one of the reasons we were interested in GM as well.  It was a good diversification for us.  We were not so present in aerospace, and now it's a good balance between aerospace, automotive, industrial...  We started to see some growth in defense and that's a segment that we are going to keep an eye on.  When we put all this together, that's why we decided to keep investing in Chicago.  Our site in Indiana we simply equipped with an additional furnace.  Michigan, where we serve the automotive industry, but also industrial, there is some growth plan there as well.  In general, that's why the story has been quite good the last year, it's been a growth story.

To go back to your point about mastering strength.  We put a group together, and we tried to identify the values and what are the elements that bringing the three divisions together under a similar or harmonized set of values, and that's what people came with.  We have strong processes, we have strong people in the company, strong knowledge that was accumulated for years that we gained through working with different OEMs, but also people with a lot of experience still with us.  The word “strength” was coming often, so that's why we decided to build more on that.  That's why you'll see more and more mastering strength.  It's based on strong processes and strong people.  We make parts last longer and stronger, etc.

DG:  I also liked your 'LEAD' acronym that you used in the webinar- leadership experience agility and diligence.  Diligence is one of those things not often remembered as a real virtue.  Sometimes, you have to just stick to it, you know?

JF:  That's part of that focus group we put together.  They came up with different values and when we summarized them, we found it interesting that they made the word 'LEAD'.  It was a characteristic of the people here.  I was really proud of the team.  Agility is also a good one, because at times, especially in the situation we're in right now, I think remaining agile despite the growth is something we always have to keep in mind.  Always keep the entrepreneur and customer service.

DG:  I think we've covered all of these things, but I'll just throw these out because I thought this was a good slide that I captured off of your presentation.  You have- initiatives that we've started, and there were six items there and I think we've hit on all of these, but if you want to expound on any of these, let me know.  There was increased production capacity, expand heat treat services capacity, expand global footprint into new geographies, optimize sales network and good market strategies, implement modern management systems and selectively pursue M&A opportunities.  Of course, that one is of interest to me but I can understand your reservation to be cautious on that.  Does anything jump out that you want to expand on in those six?

JF:  Like you said, I think we covered the essence of most of them.  We're investing as well in a system because as we're growing and bringing on board, like GM for instance, there is a need to make sure we are connected all together and that we speak the same language in terms of financial language, but as well as operations, so metrics, etc. So we're implementing a system.  And that leads to connectivity.  We talk a lot about connectivity these days, but first internally, we have to make sure that we are all connected so that we can keep growing with a solid platform.  Then, when we make other acquisitions, we will make sure that we have a management system in place that allows us to quickly integrate any other companies.  But it leads also to connectivity.

You were asking me earlier where I see the future.  Definitely, digitalization and connectivity is something that will be quite important in our industry and for us.  When I look at different OEMs, what they're doing, and after I've worked for many years in OEMs, definitely the complexity of supply chain, velocity of supply chain is increasing and the OEMs want to have fast response with no disruption in their operation, and heat treating is part of their supply chain.  So, we need to adapt.  They are getting into connectivity; Caterpillar is doing it and many other OEMs, so I think that's the future of the heat treating industry.  At least for Nitrex, we are moving in that direction of having our equipment connected and making sure that all our sites can be managed in the standard way.  But connectivity to the equipment, having assets connected, etc.  So that's something we're investing in R&D now.

DG:  Two final things.  One if you can speak briefly to Novacap and their role in all of this and then I've got one other question after that I want to spring on you and see what you think.

JF:  Novacap invested in Nitrex, becoming a majority shareholder in 2015.  Novacap is a leading private equity firm in Canada.  They are basically composed of operators, so people who've worked or managed companies, a lot of them are part of Novacap team.  It's a really good partner for Nitrex because obviously they are interested in the operations.  They get involved when needed, but they leave enough space for the management to maneuver.  They were obviously instrumental behind the deal with GM Enterprises and other deals potentially to come.  So far, it's a very good partnership.  It's more than a partnership actually; they are our major shareholder.

DG:  Do they have a 51+, if you don't mind me asking?

JF:  Yes, they are a majority shareholder.

Another advantage is within their portfolio of companies, they invest in different companies and we are working with some of them actually.  Some are in the projects to double up for their capabilities for Nitrex, so it's been a good marriage so far.

DG:  Here's the question I want to spring on you.  I've got a big smile on my face because it's not a hard question to answer.  I just like getting a little bit more on the personal side of things.  You've been with Nitrex a year.  What is that excites you most about the future?  And secondly, what is it that's keeping you up at night, in the sense of, what are you worrying about?

JF:  Let's start with the first one.  While it's a global company with tremendous potential for growth – its amazing products, a good reputation, solid people on board, I think there's a good recipe here and lots of knowledge here in the company. – there is great potential to be better known to the OEMs because of the knowledge in metallurgy in this company in heat treating. Our people can go way beyond just selling a product.  There is a lot of potential and that excites me a lot.  I think a global team, a company of that size with a heat treating business, there are not that many, so that's very exciting.

Things keeping me up at night – I think we should always remain alert and agile with what's going on in the market, so not that it's keeping me up at night. But, when we go through challenges like we're going through right now, we need to move at a faster pace on many initiatives and that's why we are launching, or we have launched, multiple initiatives, some I shared with you here.  That's part of remaining agile.  It's good to be challenged and it's good to stay always on the edge because the market is changing, and it forces us to adapt and fast.  I like that actually.  My management team likes it.  They don't like to be in the comfort zone.

I think the key takeaway that I would like your readers to remember Nitrex as a solutions provider going beyond the sale of a product.  We can get involved and help customers solving complex engineering problems and that is how we want to present the company to the market and our customers.

Read more about Nitrex's rebranding: https://www.heattreattoday.com/industries/manufacturing-heat-treat/nitrex-reveals-new-brand-identity/ 

Read about the July expansion in at the Illinois plant: https://www.heattreattoday.com/equipment/heat-treating-accessories/vacuum-pumps-gauges-valves/vacuum-pumps-gauges-valves-news/commercial-heat-treater-expands/?oly_enc_id=

 

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 #32: A Discussion with Jean-François Cloutier, Nitrex CEO Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #31: A Discussion with David Wolff, Nel Hydrogen, COVID-19 Update

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO

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, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, speaks with David Wolff of Nel Hydrogen about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected supply chains, specifically those relating to hydrogen generation. Click below to learn more about what risks the supply chain for hydrogen is facing, how the ongoing crisis may affect supply and employee safety, and what the benefits of on-site hydrogen generation are during this unusual time.

Click the play button below to listen.

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Doug Glenn (DG):  We’re here today with David Wolff from Nel Hydrogen. Dave is the eastern regional sales manager, and we’ve had a couple of previous Heat Treat Radio episodes with Dave talking about on-site hydrogen generation; but in light of COVID-19 and all that has happened there, we wanted to revisit this issue.

David Wolff, eastern regional sales manager, Nel Hydrogen

David Wolff (DW):  It’s been an amazing time, and I think we’re all shocked by the number of unexpected and wide-ranging effects of this COVID-19 event.  We talked about discussing supply chain interruptions, which have been unbelievable and sometimes counterintuitive.  You go to the grocery store these days and look at the shelves, the toilet paper, the rice, the meat, milk, and eggs, and they’re all empty.  People talk about going to Amazon, and even PC monitors are sold out, thermometers and jigsaw puzzles.  The most humorous is this world of zoom meetings.  Even dress shirts and blouses are selling, but not pants and skirts.  It is an interesting time.

I’ve been astounded by the wide-ranging effects on all businesses.  I’ve just recently reviewed my recent business charge card bill, and the total amount that I charged in March and April was zero.  That’s money that didn’t support restaurants, hotels, gasoline, airlines, and obviously their supply chain suffered. We’re seeing virtually every business running into raw material shortfall caused by shutdowns or logistics issues extreme in the supply chain: yeast for pizza, alcohol for chemicals and cleaners, metal parts for assembled machinery. Here in Connecticut, we have a small but healthy dairy industry, and it’s tragic to see logistics issues causing dairy farmers to dump milk [they] can’t sell, while bottled milk prices at the grocery store are surging upward.

DG:  It’s definite that the impact, as you said, and said it well, has been wide ranging, in many ways somewhat devastating and somewhat counterintuitive.  It’s hard to tell.  But we want to talk specifically today and revisit for a bit on-site hydrogen generation based on what has been happening in light of these changes.  What exactly are companies having to look at now that they weren’t having to look at before?

(source: Наркологическая Клиника on Pixabay)

DW:  What we hear from companies is that they’re focused on two priorities.  They’re focused on employee safety and the control of factors of production, their supply chain.  So they want to bring people back in a safe fashion, and that’s requiring an immense amount of accommodation.  And then they need to make sure that they have their raw material.  Hydrogen is required for most types of heat treating, sintering, as a carrier gas in fuel for analytical equipment, semiconductor processing for chemicals, and for operation of power plants.  Without hydrogen, these things do not happen.  We’ve lived this through at Nel before.

Ten years ago, just post [Hurricane] Katrina, when delivered hydrogen was limited due to plant outages, Nel Hydrogen, which was then Proton On-Site, was actually contacted by the federal government to prioritize hydrogen generator deliveries to power plants because without hydrogen, power plants can’t operate, and we were under orders to prioritize electrical supply.  So we’ve seen some aspects of this before.

DG:  Let’s talk briefly about what some of the risks are for delivered hydrogen.  What are we talking about here?

DW:  There are new supply chain risks to consider.  Most of us have seen this pretty personally.  We haven’t purchased any gasoline in weeks, that’s why the price is low.  In almost all cases, the hydrogen that is delivered to US customers is actually a co-product, or almost a byproduct, of the refinery processing of crude oil.  It is not the primary product for the plant, it is a co-product.  The excess hydrogen is then sold at relatively low prices to industrial gas providers for purification, packaging, and resale.

So if the gasoline is not in demand, the supply of hydrogen available for sale to the industrial gas suppliers will decline because it’s not being produced.  So you have that risk of the basic hydrogen supply.  You then have the fact that the hydrogen plant may be lower in business priority compared to other gases when it comes to staffing limitations.  Right now oxygen is the focus of all the industrial gas companies, and I’m going to talk about some of the implications of that.

The other thing is that the U.S. supply chain for hydrogen, particularly in cylinders, has multiple steps.  A failure in any step will result in shortfalls.  For example, because of the cost and challenges of storage, the entire industrial gas industry runs with very lean inventories.  You can’t just put industrial gases on the shelf; they need to be packaged or stored in tanks, and the amount of storage is very limited.  So logistic hiccups very quickly result in shortages.

Cylinder and tube trailer distribution chains might become frozen because empties are not being returned from customers who are closed.  Additionally, for cylinder hydrogen, cylinders have been taken out of hydrogen service and re-serviced into medical oxygen.  The suppliers are encountering delays for cleaning and disinfection around delivery of cylinder hydrogen.  And discussions about additional waves of COVID-19 and whether people have acquired resistance, and therefore can go back to work, are all delaying a return to a normal situation.

DG:  Is it possible that some of the customers might experience limitations, hydrogen supply limitations, different than other customers?

(source: Luisella Planeta Leoni on Pixabay)

DW:  It’s always tricky to guess, but my feeling is that the effect on the hydrogen supply is likely to be noticed by the smallest volume users first, and maybe most acutely.  That’s because the cylinder hydrogen logistics are the most complicated, whereas liquid hydrogen is the least.  Liquid hydrogen goes directly from the place of manufacture to the customer.  And you’re limited there primarily by driver availability and travel challenges, whereas tube trailer and tube bank users depend on an additional stage of trans-fill from liquid to gas.

Now those are the same locations that are struggling to fill oxygen orders for hospitals, and in the industrial gas industry, nothing is more important than a hospital oxygen delivery.  There it’s really a question of availability of staff and prioritization.  But cylinder filling and distribution is by far the most equipment and people-intensive form of delivery because you’ve got liquid trans-fill, cylinder management, filling, QC, and local delivery all under great pressure because of resources and priorities.  And then again, the issue of cylinder availability because every cylinder that can possibly be re-serviced is being re-serviced into oxygen service for hospitals.

Finally, for folks who are using forming gas in cylinder form in kind of low quantities, [there are] likely to be long delays because of the scarcity of the skilled people to do the blending and analysis required for performing gas blending.

DG:  You’ve laid out nicely, I think, the potential risks of what’s going on with COVID-19 and how it may impact supply and even employee safety.  Let’s do a quick review of the benefits of on-site generation as opposed to having it delivered in tubes or cylinders or whatever, and how does that impact our thinking as far as on-site hydrogen generation these days?

DW:  If hydrogen is a raw material for you, hydrogen generation can enable you to make all of your hydrogen at your site automatically with little personnel attention, so it becomes a utility.  The only raw material that you depend on to make that happen are electricity and water, which come into your facility in pipes and wires, and of all the logistics chains, electricity and water tend to be among the most reliable.  So no trucks, no people, and so forth.  And then hydrogen eliminates the space and compliance issues related to hydrogen deliveries and storage.

Finally, and this is not strictly related to COVID-19, but hydrogen generation will stabilize your hydrogen cost.  So in a time when force majeure charges tend to crop up during times of difficult logistics, you don’t see those.

Click on the image above if you’d like to get your own download of this 18-page e-book.

DG:  Dave, in addition to our two earlier podcasts together, and the eBook, Hydrogen Generation and its Benefits for Heat Treaters, which you can find on our website, where else would you direct people to find more information about on-site hydrogen generation?

DW:  I would direct them, if they wish, to go to the nelhydrogen.com website for more details on our equipment.

DG:  Any concluding thoughts?  Anything else you want to leave us with?

DW: On-site hydrogen can’t be implemented overnight, so it makes sense to plan ahead.  If this concept makes sense to you, we’d be happy to have a conversation.  The current thinking is, this COVID-19 issue may be with us for months, and there is even talk of waves lasting years.  So we will see this again. On-site hydrogen is a solution to many of the long-term problems we’ve identified that are associated with delivered and stored hydrogen. And if there is anything this strange COVID-19 experience has shown us, it’s the importance of supply chains for businesses, their employees, and their customers.

Whether the issue was [Hurricane] Katrina or COVID-19, supply and demand mismatches for hydrogen, or just the diminishing attractiveness of driving the trucks to deliver hydrogen, businesses may wish to control the factors of their own production.

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 #31: A Discussion with David Wolff, Nel Hydrogen, COVID-19 Update Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #30: Dr. Shahrukh Irani on Job Shop Lean

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO

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: Dr. Shahrukh Irani of Lean & Flexible LLC

In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews Dr. Shahrukh Irani of Lean & Flexible LLC about how manufacturers with in-house heat treat might implement the Job Shop Lean concept, thereby increasing profits and efficiencies. Listen to learn whether your company might benefit from examining its processes and making parts of its daily operations more lean, flexible, and ultimately more profitable.

Click the play button below to listen.

Transcript: Dr. Shahrukh Irani of Lean & Flexible LLC

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

DG: We're going to discuss how manufacturers with in-house heat treat might implement lean manufacturing concepts to increase profits and efficiencies. But first, I'd like to give a shout-out to John Tirpak, who I've know for many years, and his recommendation to talk to today's guest, Dr. Shahrukh Irani.  I first met John when I was involved with the creation of a magazine called Forge, a publication that is still published by BNP media and serves the North American forging industry.  John is a very accomplished engineer, metallurgist, and C level management guy with a lot of energy and vision. He knows the metals, forging, and heat treat industry, and it is on his recommendation that we're talking to Dr. Irani today, so thanks, John.

Dr. Shahrukh Irani, President, Lean & Flexible LLC

Dr. Irani is the president of a one person consulting company, Lean & Flexible LLC.  Lean manufacturing isn't a topic discussed too frequently in the heat treat world, but there are significant benefits to be gained by doing so.  That's why today's conversation with Dr. Irani should be of significant benefit to you, especially if you're a high mix/low volume manufacturer, as opposed to a low mix/high volume manufacturer.  While the bulk of heat treat today's audience are manufacturers with their own in-house heat treat departments, many of these departments heat treat a wide variety of parts and therefore qualify as high mix, low volume producers.  Our friends in the commercial heat treat world will also find this episode beneficial since most of their business is built around high mix/low volume job shop type work.

SI:  My company's name is Lean and Flexible.  I am just a one person consulting gig.  The name pretty much tells everybody what I think needs to be done.  When you are high mix/low volume, (especially if you are job shop, but not necessarily job shop), you want to be lean, which is waste-free, efficient; but then you want to be flexible.  You want to be able to do a whole variety of parts in different quantities. Everybody can talk lean; but when you try to become flexible, all of those things that your favorite consultant taught you to believe kind of work against you.  You have to be agile.  Agile is the speed with which you can change your world and do different types of heat treat. That's pretty much what my consulting company does.

DG:  Very briefly, with respect to your background, I know that you've been in academia for a while, but when you met John, you spun off this new company.  Tell us briefly about your academic background, and also if you don't mind, tell us about maybe any interaction with Toyota, which, of course, is the big company when it comes to lean.

SI:  I began my academic career after I got my PhD in 1990 and straight for about 22 years, from 1990 to 2012, I was in academia.  I read that book, Lean Thinking, which talked about Toyota in 1999, and it really got me interested.  What is called lean, or what is called the Toyota Production System, is just industrial engineering, but very hands on.  Toyota basically figured out industrial engineering the way that the rest of us, especially in America, never did. And that's basically what lean is--Toyota style industrial engineering.

When I began in 2003 when John met me, his challenge to me was, look, research is fine, but I deal with custom forge shops.  They make batches of 50 and 100.  They don't make 200,000 cars a year.  So throw all that Toyota flavor of lean out the window.  You give me some lean stuff that I can benefit these custom forging suppliers who send parts to the DOD.  That's how this whole idea of job shop lean was born. Industrial engineering, which is the math and the science, and then blended with this very hands on, very practical industrial engineering that came out of Toyota.  I think that's very key.  I don't think the world recognizes that we actually teach a profession, that there are professionals called industrial engineers, but how do they practice the Toyota method of industrial engineering, that that education is just academic.

DG:  I saw a statement on your website that maybe ties in here.  Maybe you could expound on this a little bit.  I thought it was a very interesting statement.  You have a statement on your website that says this: "Where industrial engineering meets the Toyota production system." Can you expound on that a little bit? Exactly what does that mean, and why you have that on your website?

SI:  Sure.  Look at me.  I was an academic for 22 years.  I never worked at Toyota, so I never had the benefit of their expert lean implementers teaching me.  But I was an industrial engineer.  So when I read things like value stream mapping and one piece flow and a little Japanese was Kaizen, Jidoka, Poka Yoke, Kanban; when you distill those practices down, at the bottom of it is pure industrial engineering.  Like when you smelt iron, the slag comes to the top, but what remains is that pure molten iron. That is industrial engineering.

I did not work at Toyota, but I was an industrial engineer.  So what choice did I have to develop this thing called job shop lean for John, who was like, “Hey, you've got to benefit heat treaters who have pre-machining and post-machining.” All I had was my industrial engineering, and then I remastered it.  I started asking myself if this academic theory is good.  What is the practical version?  So I looked to the Toyota production system industrial engineering, and I distilled that down and I connected it to all.  So all this is metal standard stuff I was taught and read doesn't fit.  So I did a Frankenstein kind of thing.  I took what worked, and I took the science of industrial engineering and blended it together.  And that is what I teach and practice today. It's industrial engineering done my way. It works, I fail, I succeed, learn from my mistakes.

DG:  I mentioned to you earlier that our primary audience are manufacturing companies who have their own in-house heat treat departments, so they're somewhat in-line perhaps.  But I don't know that many of the industrial manufacturing companies that we deal with really think of lean being an element of their heat treat operations.  So, my question to you is could you come up with, on the spur of the moment, say, 3 to 5 of the most common opportunities that are missed by these manufacturers with their own in-house heat treat departments, if they're not thinking lean and flexible? What are some of the opportunities that they're missing?

SI:  I'll give it a stab. First thing is you look at the total flow. Look at sawing, turning, milling, grinding, drilling, heat treating, force grind machining, assembly.  You look at heat treating as a process, as a department.  Just as you would organize any facility, you ask, ,"Can you identify your value streams?"  And heat treatment just becomes a department, a step, in those value streams.  All you care about is I get bar stock and I get forging and I machine it through and I heat treat it, improve its properties, force heat treat machining, assembly, and ship.  That's the first thing that I don't know, and please correct me, I don't know that these manufacturers who have heat treating simply as a process inside their four walls, but that's the first thing that they've done. Have they designed flexible line, flexible cells? Heat treatment is kind of un-lean. It's process driven.  It's very incompatible with, say, grinding or CNC machining, and it's batch intensive.  The control aspects of heat treating process, spherodizing and annealing and stress relieving are a lot more involved.  But that's important.  The first thing is, have we identified our value streams?

The second thing is do we schedule?  How do we schedule the shop?  There are challenges, but it's not that the challenges are insurmountable. I find that scheduling is the second massive weakness in just about any manufacturer, whether or not they're or aerospace or mining.  Whether or not they have heat treat inside or heat treat outsourced, that is the second thing.  Scheduling is a big weakness.

The third thing is that heat treatment definitely has process control software that's monitoring the recipes and the heat treat cycles of the furnaces and other processes.  Great; but what's missing is the third thing, and that's communication.  Multiple manufacturers have heat treatment right smack in the middle of their facility and their pre-heat treat and post-heat treat process steps.  I don't believe that they have utilized their control systems more as a communication system to pre-heat treat work centers and post-heat treat work centers.  They could be using the software as machine monitoring systems, but they can also use that as manufacturing execution systems.  I think that's the third weakness.  They have not really connected the heat treat to "Hey, I need to go buy money. And every time product builds up in a batch, I'm losing money." That's the cost of inventory.  That's my third observation.  They treat this incompatible area, heat treat or furnaces, and we feed them as their own little baby; but they forget the fact that there are pre- and post- links.

One last thing I did some reading about the equipment that you have for heat treatment. I'm not sure, but when I looked at these furnaces, they are all big, long boxes.  I don't know that that's the best design of the equipment in that particular industry.  In lean, in assembly, they are driven by one-piece flow.  They are driven by one person attending multiple stages.  They are driven by visual management.  And I didn't get the feeling that the big, long boxes that they built were designed for one-piece flow but that they were designed for transfer batch flow, which is what the other sectors of industry are doing.  Why should all the parts be on the bottom on the conveyor?  Could they be bucket spiral conveyors?  Could you use the vertical rather than the horizontal?  I think that machine design could learn. And especially if you've got heat treatment inside a bigger facility, you've got to be a lot more creative about how to get one-piece flow, visual monitoring, communication to other departments.  I feel that may be a lost opportunity.

DG:  The design of the equipment is an interesting aspect to discuss. A lot of times the reason those furnaces, (you're talking continuous furnaces in this case, or semi-continuous furnaces), are long, straight lines with an entrance on one end and an exit on the other, it is a design issue.  It is an expense issue. Certainly, there are furnaces out there that can do a U-shape or a serpentine shape, or things of that sort, or even use vertical.

The issue tends to be in a lot of this, the material transfer becomes quite a bit more expensive and a potential maintenance issue, which nobody wants, when we have to transfer baskets or parts on a belt. Transfer systems work well at ambient temperatures; but when you get them up in the high temperatures, you've got a problem.  But your point is well taken.  I think that the point is, let's take a look at not only the layout of the facility and how we're using it, but the design of the equipment itself could certainly benefit by that.

That brings me to a question here.  You and I talked to John Tirpak a little bit and threw this question out, and I thought it was kind of interesting.  He said recognizing heat treatment is often characterized with fixed, monumental pieces of equipment.  What can be done on either side of the heating and cooling operations to lean out the process?  I think his point is well taken.  Most people think this is a huge piece of equipment.  We can't really lean out this piece of equipment. Maybe that's true; maybe it's not. But I would like to ask you, can we lean out a large static piece of equipment, let say, and if not, are we just talking about leaning out the processes before it and after it?

SI:  I cut my teeth with the so-called job shop lean for high mix/low volume in forge shops. So I didn't have the benefit of going into some little family line area and doing one piece flow for textile products or table assembly. It was forges. So what happens with forges is you've got saws and then you've got pre-heat treat furnaces and then you have the big presses and hammers. They are monumental from the get-go.  Then once the part gets hammered, it then drops into a wire mesh container, and then some time later the forklift guy comes and drags it off and goes and dumps it some place in the yard.  Of course you look at things like right sizing.

A wonderful example that came out of the Toyota world was Ford had built this massive 10 million dollar washing machine that was supposed to be capable of washing many different types of parts, but its up-time was maybe 60%. Toyota went to the local Lowes and bought dishwashers, and they changed the inside of the dishwashers and sized the machine to the volume and the shape of the parts.  They "right-sized."  They took something that everybody thought was "Oh, that's a monument," and made it flexible, and anything flexible is unreliable.  Anything flexible is hard to learn to use.  I think that's the whole idea.  You have to look at these monuments and say, "What can we do pre-?"

I know that the furnace has to do batches.  But how much time that the furnace is just burning oil and electricity and doesn't have a load inside of it?  If you ask what is the total time that I've got metal inside the furnace, that is the true value added utilization of that big, hot, long box.  Like welding.  I don't care about how wonderful a welding station is.  I'm asking, what's the arc time?  And also, within that arc time, how many of the parts have produced with good welds? That's all I care about.  So I think that's what people have to look at, especially those who have heat treatment inside the four walls.  They have to use what is called theory of constraint.

They might say we've got heat treat as the constraint.  How do we optimize throughput? Then we have pre-heat treat work. How do I flow work so that I'm putting the right orders in the right quantity in the right sequence, always available to go and do that big, long box?  And then post constraint; how do I flow product after the heat treat process?  People have to use things like theory of constraints and continuous flow, but then they have to adapt the concept.  Personally, I believe that the monument thing, once people like you are brought to think about the process, how to break down the constraints of batch, the time that it takes to get that heat cycle stabilized from the previous cycle, I think the creativity has to be unleashed.  You recognize the limitations; but if you look at things like right-sizing, downsizing, pool scheduling, buffer management, overall shop scheduling, water spiders who know exactly when they must bring a load to the furnace, water spiders who know when they should take a load from the furnace to the grinding work centers.  I think that communication and continuous flow capability, that is how you de-monument the monument.

DG:  Your company name is Lean & Flexible, but it seems to me that one of the products, if you will, that you're offering is something called job shop lean.  Can you explain what it is and what is the value of it?

SI:  So John [Tirpak] came around and said look, I love your research, but I don't want this lean stuff that everybody and their dog is doing.  There was MIT and there was Michigan and everybody was having their own program, lean this and lean that.  Fundamentally, what they were doing was driven by going and copycating what Toyota was doing.  But the fundamental observation that I had was there are essentially two types of manufacturers, at least.  There are the OEMs, the John Deeres, the Toyotas, the Boeings.  They assemble stuff.  You can't take a jet assembly line and make dishwashers on it, right?  Then on the other hand, you have these job shops with, what I would say Mom and Pop, but they want to be flexible.  They cannot make money by making the same thing, 120,00 pieces of it in the year.  They basically are in small volumes, lots of part numbers and different requirements, mature properties, a lot of customers.  That creates a lot of uncertainty, that work environment.  But whereas the Toyota side is "we will of course use the same assembly line, we might make vans, we might make cars, but we're going to push out just these 4-wheel things. Job shop lean was born.

I stepped back and I said everybody's talking lean, but all this lean stuff is just for assembly.  Half the tools don't even work in high mix/low volume environments.  So that's when the buzz word "job shop lean" came about.  I look at those manufacturers where they've got issues of  shifting bottlenecks, they've got issues of suppliers jerking them around, they have lots of changeovers in their set-ups, all their parts go different routes around the shop – that's basically what we call a job shop.  But John says, you need to tell me what you're going to do at these fourteen companies that I'm going to set you up with. I had to come up with a plan that I'm going teach my students, thus and such, then we're going to place them at these Ford shops, I'm going to mentor them remotely from Columbus, Ohio, but they'll be so knowledgeable and they themselves are so good, they'll be able to implement this, this, this at your fourteen plants.

And those tools, what works and what doesn't work, that's true.  You can't have one-piece fluid heat treatment.  You can't do tatk time. A CNC lathe works at a totally different speed compared to a furnace.  A CNC lathe can make a piece and pass it on.  In heat treatment, you cannot.  You have to have a certain amount of mass inside at all times.  You can change over a CNC mill within 30 minutes.  Try doing that on a furnace with its own recipe from one drum to another.  That's what job shop lean is basically saying.  We're not going to learn from Toyota what 90% of US manufacturers need to because they're all high mix/low volume.  Please listen to me, I've got some knowledge.  Toyota was an inspiration, but at a certain point, because they are not telling me the answers to high mix/low volume situations, I'm going to find them myself.

DG:  There are a number of companies and people that are going to be listening to this that might ask the question, "How do I know if my company or my in-house heat treat department is a candidate for some sort of lean analysis?  Would we benefit by having some sort of lean analysis?"  What would you encourage those people inside?  What are the signs that they should be looking for in their company that says they should seriously consider some sort of lean philosophy or lean analysis of some sort?  What would be the red flags, let's say?

SI:  I have a job shop lean assessment tool.  It's a 5-page, yes/no type of questioning.  If anyone is interested, all they have to do is send me an email and they'll receive that Word document.  Put an X to answer all the questions and send it back to me, and I should be able to give them very quickly just walking down their replies, it should be very easy to figure out if yes, you are eligible for this high mix/low volume lean approach because you've got heat treatment and a lot of pre-heat and post heat treat process.  That's one step.

The second step would be to get your camera out and take a walk through the facility.  In your mind, you have a generic part that you make and you're basically imagining yourself to be that part.  You put the camera on your helmet and then you start to walk and talk me through the process.  The second thing would be to send me a video. And then we do a Zoom session and walk me through that video.

DG:  So, it's more or less a virtual video tour of a typical part and how it's processed.

SI:  Yes.  I have right now in the age of COVID-19, where instead of worrying about doing business, it's an open offer that I phone the study group for job shop lean, and the only expectation is that I will do as much as I can to work with you via remote with no strings attached; but if you want to get the job shop lean, then you should do a pilot project and you should follow the method.

I'm recording all of my lectures and posting them online on Vimeo so that anyone can access it, no strings attached, no financial expectation.  But the third thing is, do something.  Do a pilot project.  Do what we did at Sysco Forge Group 20 years ago.   Do what we did at Aluminum Precision Products.  Unless you do it, you're not going to get a sense of "Wow, I didn't even know that we've got 20 types of cutting tool inserts," you know?

DG:  Yes.  I think with lean, it's not a topic that is often discussed in the heat treat world, and I think the issue here is that there is a lot that people don't know that they don't know.  So it's really a discovery process and to that extent, I would encourage people to reach out to you to at least start that discovery process.

Let's talk quickly as we wrap up here, let's talk about some contact information, so people can get in touch with you.  What is the web address to at least go there and start looking a little bit more at what you're doing?

SI:  www.leanandflexible.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 #30: Dr. Shahrukh Irani on Job Shop Lean Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #29: Heat Treating and Coal with Brian Joseph, CEO Touchstone Research

/ AEROSPACE HEAT TREAT, FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO

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 Treating and Coal with Brian Joseph, CEO Touchstone Research

In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews Brian Joseph, the founder, CEO, and president of Touchstone Research Laboratories, about the emerging part that coal is playing in the heat treat world. Listen to find out more about the surprising uses of coal in heat treating, the development of the world's strongest aluminum, and some tips for how to make your organization run at its best.

Click the play button below to listen.

Transcript: Heat Treating and Coal with Brian Joseph, CEO Touchstone Research

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

We are headed to coal country, just outside Wheeling, West Virginia, to talk to Brian Joseph, founder, CEO, and president of Touchstone Research Laboratories as well as several other companies pertinent to the heat treat industry.  If you thought coal was a commodity of the past, I suggest you buckle up for one of the most interesting Heat Treat Radio episodes that will widely expand your appreciation for coal and its future uses in the heat treat industry.

I was introduced to Brian Joseph by Heat Treat Today's lead editor, Karen Gantzer, who just happens to be a relative of Brandon Robinson, a young, very sharp engineer working for one of Brian Joseph's companies, Touchstone Advanced Composites.  Brian and Brandon hosted both Karen and I at their campus in Triadelphia, WV, earlier this year, and were gracious enough to spend an entire afternoon showing us around and talking with us about some of the exceptionally fascinating esoteric work they're doing for all sorts of world leading companies in aerospace, defense, and energy as well as a host of other government agencies and national labs.  I think you'll find this episode fascinating, and I bet you're going to learn something new about coal.

Brian Joseph, Founder, CEO, and president of Touchstone Research Laboratories (source: TouchstoneAC)

Brian Joseph is the president, CEO, and founder of Touchstone Research Laboratory, as well as Touchstone Advanced Composites, Touchstone Testing Laboratory, and CFOAM Limited.

BJ:  I grew up in the panhandle of West Virginia and went to a local university, West Liberty University, and did a little bit of graduate work at Ohio State.  I then started my own business.  I never had a "job."  I've only owned my own business, and that is Touchstone Research Laboratory.  At Touchstone, we invent all kinds of things.  We put out, sometimes, a patent a month, and then we spin businesses out.  We've spun out three businesses in the last three years, and we have probably three more in the works today.

DG:  If I remember correctly, you're doing stuff for the aerospace industry and the automotive industry.  What other major markets are you hitting on?

BJ:  As you can envision, an innovative company like Touchstone Research Laboratory is far ranging.  We do a lot of work in aerospace, we do work in automotive, we do work in general manufacturing; we're inventing all kinds of things all the time.  And then there are our spin-out companies.  Touchstone Laboratory has three locations.  We do a lot of aerospace testing for virtually every aerospace company at those facilities. We test all kinds of materials at Touchstone Testing.

Then we spun out CFOAM, which is probably what we'll talk mostly about today.  This is a foam we make from coal.  In the research lab, we do a lot of coal-to-products research.  This is a foam that is extremely strong and can withstand really high temperature.  CFOAM is a publicly traded company today on the Australian stock exchange.  The applications for that are in numerous markets, one of which is in heat treating.

The third business is called Touchstone Advanced Composites.  Touchstone Advanced Composites takes the foam that CFOAM makes and builds the molds for next generation carbon fiber airplanes, rockets, etc.  Many of these are companies that you would recognize--all of the big aerospace companies, all of the commercial launches to space; we work with virtually everyone to build the molds to make their carbon fiber parts, and we do that on coal, which I think is sort of surprising to people.

DG:  I get excited about this.  This is what I want to tease our audience about a little bit, if you will, is coal.  The place of coal in heat treat.  Where might we find it currently, if at all?  And, in your mind, because I know you're very much a forward thinker, where do you see coal being used in the heat treat market, or even outside the heat treat market in the future?

BJ:  Today, the big uses for coal are electricity, to make electricity to run kilns and things.  In steel making, the coke for steel making and in cement production, we often burn coal to heat the cement.  These are current uses.

Many years ago when I was a kid, there was this basketball player that was named Lou Alcindor, and he was dunking the basketball at will and just dominating college basketball.  So they outlawed it.  They said nobody's allowed to dunk anymore.  In general, you would think that would be devastating.  But no, he just invents a special hook shot called the “sky hook” and now, all of a sudden, he can score from 20' out at will.  He became one of the highest scorers in basketball.  To me, that's what is going on in coal right now.  The things that it is dominating today, that is its primary markets, are under a lot of pressure.  But when I look out, what do I think is going to happen, is a huge number of products.

Let me tell you what we're doing right now.  We take the coal in the CFOAM business, we grind it into powder, we heat it under pressure, and we blow it up into beautiful black foam.  (Think Styrofoam only a thousand times stronger and good to enormously high temperatures, like probably up to 3000°C.)

Over at Touchstone Advanced Composites, they're building the molds to make carbon fiber airplane parts because the foam is high temperature so it will go in the autoclave.  It's very strong. It also does not expand and contract hardly at all with changes in temperature, and that's what you want in the best mold-making material.  What I get a kick out of is, you take coal out of the ground and all of a sudden we're making parts for the James Webb space telescope.

Where else will it be used?  Wow, anywhere you could think of a really high temperature.  Just imagine Styrofoam a thousand times stronger and fireproof.  Where would you use it? Everywhere.  When I think heat treatment, where do I think the obvious applications are? Kiln furniture--the strength of this stuff compresses strength of the low density material is over a thousand pounds per square inch.  Kiln insulation because it is very insulating--especially kiln floors.  Now all of a sudden, you've got a carbon floor you could walk on that is an insulator.  And, by the way, the higher density material that we make has a compressive strength so high you could set a car on one square inch and it wouldn't crush, so we're talking really high strength.

CFOAM carbon foam used as kiln furniture (source: TouchstoneAC)

You can pass electricity through it and use it as a heating element, and we've done that at times.  I could envision someone building some kilns where you lay it up like you do refractory brick today, only a carbon version of refractory brick.  One of the other ones that we don't typically think about, and is this in the heat treatment area?  I don't know, but it's sort of interesting.  CFOAM has a program with Argon National Laboratories.  Argon is working on concentrated solar power. This is the thousands of mirrors in the desert that reflect light up to a single point, and then that heats a fluid and it goes underground and it melts like a salt (like sodium chloride, like the stuff you eat) or magnesium chloride.  You're over 1400°F, so the salt is great material to hold the heat, but it's a really bad material to conduct the heat.  So we're taking the salt, putting it in the pores of the foam, and then using the ligaments of the coal foam to conduct the heat to store the energy in the salt.  Again, what I like about that is we're going to store solar power in coal, which is, again, counterintuitive.

DG:  And a bit of an irony, right?

BJ:  Yes!  I think you're going to see these carbon foams everywhere.

DG:  When we think of the heat treat industry, we certainly don't think about using coal; but in some of these new applications, like you say, being pressed in their major markets, whether it's energy production and things of that sort, there are new applications, and Touchstone Research Labs is developing some of these things.  That to me is what is interesting.

Let's talk outside of heat treat for just a minute.  I want to prime you on one of them, and then if you think of others, feel free to run with them.  You and I spoke previously about the use of coal as architectural structures in the future in place of concrete structures.  Can you hit on that a bit, and if there is anything else outside of the thermal part of coal being used outside the heat treat industry, just go ahead and roll right into those?

BJ:  We're working with a gentleman named Mark Goulthorpe.  He is an architect at MIT.  He has a program called Carbon House with the Department of Energy.  Specifically, it's an ARPA-E program, that's their real advanced technology area, and he presents this story.  He says the world population has been increasing at a very high rate of speed, but the wealth didn't spread around the world for a long time, so people didn't have much money, they didn't make much, and they didn't buy much, so we didn't notice them so much.  But what's happened in the last 20 years, maybe the greatest accomplishment of man in the last 20 years, is we've reduced that extreme poverty 80% worldwide, which is just extraordinary.  So now, all of a sudden, the complex part of this is that these people are moving to cities at a rate of a million people a week.  That means, inside 30 years, we will need to double the number of houses and buildings on the surface of the earth inside 30 years.  The construction boom has already started.  Imagine you've got to build a million, I'll say apartments, and office buildings and things every week until after the year 2050.  He points out, what are we going to build all of this out of?  There is not enough wood on this planet.  You can't use concrete.  If we're concerned about global climate change and that puts out more carbon dioxide than burning coal, so what are our options?  He points out that the answer is probably buried in our hydrocarbons.  Things like methane to carbon nanotubes where we take the carbons and the methane and we make carbon nanotubes.  That will be part of the structure.  Take the hydrogen and make that the fuel.

And at MIT, that's what they're thinking the future is.  And CFOAM will probably play a major role in these kinds of structures because at the end of the day, the coal that we make the foam from is very inexpensive, available in extraordinarily large quantity, and can make fireproof structures that are inexpensive and with a pretty low carbon footprint.  The production of the foam is a very small carbon footprint production.  It does not produce much pollution or production of much CO2 and that kind of thing.  So it's fairly green.  It's funny to talk about coal in a green way, but it really is a pretty green product.  And that may be the thing that gets us there.

DG:  Yes. And compared to the manufacturing of concrete, it's a lot greener manufacturing the CFOAM panels, let's say, as opposed to concrete.

Clean Room (source: TouchstoneAC)

BJ:  Yes, absolutely.  Some fun things to talk about for just a minute:  Over at Touchstone Advanced Composites, we've made the molds to make parts for the James Webb space telescope.  This will be the greatest telescope, I think, the world has ever produced.  I think it's 8 times bigger than Hubble, it will be located a million miles from earth, just so everyone can have a little yardstick, that's four times the distance to the moon, and it will see back in time till to the creation of some of the first galaxies.  We've made all of these parts on molds made from coal.

We just finished building the molds to make the communications dish antenna for the NASA wide field infrared telescope, which is the size of Hubble, and that is going up soon.  We just finished the structures that will be on a solar sail for NASA.  Let me tell you what a solar sail is:  Imagine a kite, only square.  So you have two sticks on a kite.  We're going to make those out of carbon fiber, but we're going to make them in a special way that collapse, so that they go into a box 2' x 2', but when you get up into space, you open this box up and this rolls out 54 ½ ' in all directions.  You end up with this 110' solar sail that is up in space.  What's going to happen is, the light from the sun moves this thing.  Just the light, no propellant.  It will go 240 thousand miles an hour.  And we've built all the molds from CFOAM that we make from coal.

We do work with virtually every one of the commercial launches to space.  We just did the front end of a supersonic aircraft and dozens of other new aircraft that are being built.  All of that is being done on CFOAM.  That's a whole group of fun things we do.

DG:  Can you tell us about MetPreg?

BJ:  At Touchstone Research Laboratory, we're developing the world's strongest aluminum.  This is aluminum with fibers in it.  It's aluminum oxide fibers in aluminum.  What's really interesting about it is it's the highest temperature aluminum that exists, so this will be useful at temperatures up to 1000°F.  It will keep 80% of its strength.  It's 3 times stronger than the world's strongest aluminum alloy.  This is not made from coal.  This is aluminum with fibers.  We either make it in a tape form or pultruded form, or we make it into cylinders by film winding it, like you do polymer composites.  It is a whole new class of materials, and our plan is to spin that out into a separate company, probably within the next year or so.  Right now we're developing the business plan.

We are doing this on-scale already.  It's already been put on a ship.  One of the applications, by the way, is repairing the structures in large ships, especially aluminum hold ships, for fatigue in particular.  Some of these ships are tracking hundreds of fatigue cracks in the structural component, and we can use this as a patch to repair the ships while at sea and have a permanent repair.  This is an application, by the way, that I wouldn't have even come up with.  This is one that the navy came to us and said, is this something you guys could do? So we've been working in a development program with the navy.  It about a million dollar program.  While in the program, we're already on our first ship and we're really excited about that.  That application is ready to go but many of the other applications are still in development.

DG:  You've already run down a list of some of your customers, but maybe just give us a sense of the breadth and depth of your customer base, as many as you're comfortable telling us about.

MetPreg Rocket Motor Casing (source: TouchstoneAC)

BJ:  On the aerospace side, it's virtually everyone in aerospace, from your Boeing and Airbuses, Embraer, to some of your smaller ones that are suppliers to that industry.  We have hundreds and hundreds of people, especially using the CFOAM.  In terms of MetPreg, we're not there yet with flying on airplanes, but I'm really confident we will get there.  We can probably mention the work we do with Virgin. I love Richard Branson, by the way. He is a hero of mine; I think the world of him.  We've done work with some of his companies--Virgin Orbital, Virgin Galactic. They are two separate companies. Virgin Galactic is the one that's going to take people into space.

I want to spin back around and talk about what that means, taking people to space.  The thing we think about is rich people going for joy rides, which is good, and there is a market.  But don't think of it like that.  I think he's building this next generation aircraft that, for example, we'd take off from LA.  Well, it's just as easy to drop you in Chicago as it would be back to LA, in fact I think it's easier.  So I see this is as the beginning of a new way to fly around the world.

I'll give you another one--SpaceX.  They have a similar vision. SpaceX rockets are very different.  They're going to land vertical.  Richard Branson's is going to look like an airplane.  It's going to be more normal looking, but they won't go that fast; they'll go a couple thousand miles/hour maybe, whereas SpaceX is going to go like 18,000 mph.  I saw the president of SpaceX give a talk.  (In fact, by the way, one of our people got to meet Elon Musk just a few weeks ago, and he came back with the biggest grin on his face.)  So the president of SpaceX, says, "I do a lot of business in Riyadh, and I can't wait for the day that I take off from here in California, fly to Riyadh, (it will take about 40 minutes and most of that is landing), and then we'll fly back home in time to fix dinner for the family." It just made me smile. Gwynne Shotwell is awesome in every way.

Now Virgin Orbital is different.  Virgin Orbital shoots rockets up in the air.  They come off of a Boeing 747 that they've named 'Cosmic Girl,' and then it goes into orbit.  That does go fast.  It is not to carry humans, it's to put satellites in orbit.  It's an inexpensive way to put satellites in orbit.  You fly the 747 as high as you can, you tilt it a little bit upwards and you shoot your rocket right into orbit.  It's a lot less expensive than launching from the ground.  That's another one of Richard Branson's businesses and they have a great team of people working there.  I'm really optimistic about it.

For your heat treatment people, think about the temperatures we're dealing with.  The rocket motors are all super high temperature, just through the atmosphere.  It takes you up into the thousands of degrees.  So all the things your client base works with is what the outside of all of these vehicles is.  It's just interesting.  And yet, I don't know that they think in that world right now.  When you look at the number of launches going into space right now, we in the United States don't track what's going on around the world so much, so I'll give you just one example.  Rocket Lab has what they call the Electron rocket.  It will be launched from New Zealand.  Now, I was unaware that New Zealand ever launched a rocket, it's just not something I was aware of.  They're planning to launch 300 launches a year--in New Zealand!  So, what do you think the worldwide going in and out of space is going to be here in the next decade or two? I think it's going to be really large.  And markets for things like thermal protection systems or high temperature components is going to be much bigger than anyone realizes.

DG:  Shifting just a little bit.  Obviously, the organization that you've developed, Touchstone Research Laboratory, etc., your whole organization, all of them, have been very innovative.  Can you speak to the, let's say, culture there and the method by which you push the innovation?  How do you make such an innovative organization?

BJ:  You may have picked up on something with that question.  You've been here, you've walked through, and you have a feel for how we sort of work.  I went to Dearborn, Michigan, once and I went to the Henry Ford Museum in Greenfield Village.  (If anyone has never been there, you've got to go, especially if you like technical things.)  And there, Henry Ford bought Edison's first research laboratory and rebuilt it there.  It's four buildings, so you walk through the world's first industrial research laboratory.  I went there one day about 4 years ago, and I was not necessarily a big Edison fan.  I knew who he was and everything, but when I walked into this building, it was like something was overly familiar.  So I said to my wife, “I have to go back there and spend a day by myself just in the buildings and just look around.”

Here's what I figured out:  As you know, I never "got a job." I went to graduate school, came out, and started my own research laboratory from scratch.  I didn't know all of the modern processes to manage a laboratory.  So I'm sort of figuring out from scratch as a kid in my twenties and trying to work my way through.  And what I ran into was a process that ends up being almost identical to what Edison did.  I'm not saying I'm smart like Edison, I'm just saying that my invention process ended up remarkably similar.  Here's how it goes: In R&D, you need some well educated people, they've got their PhD from Berkeley or MIT or wherever, for example.  But then there is this other group that fabricates stuff.  This person, maybe from MIT, says, “Hey, what if we make this vacuum chamber and heat in this way with microwaves and then we put UV light in?” and that's my idea on Monday morning.  Now it's about how fast can we turn that into something real, run our experiments, and get to the next thing.  In R&D, the thinking part is seconds, minutes, or hours, but the doing part is usually days, weeks, and months.  So if you want to collapse your time of invention, you work on that second side, and you get the best technicians you can.  And they make the people with the high degrees look really smart.  So it's how you blend those together that I think can create this really unique environment, and I think that's sort of money that tricks behind what we do.

(source: TouchstoneAC)

In addition to that, we're a real flat organization and things like that. There are a lot of things that people don't know about Edison's management approach, but he dressed down for work. He didn't want to be seen as the boss at work. He just blended in and went from person to person. When investors would show up, people would be running around, saying, “Get him cleaned up!” At work, he didn't have any airs about him, which is the right answer. The more central control you have, the less your organization has that ability to just run. You've got to handle your organization very gently. He was the first guy to ever build an industrial research facility. He did amazingly well with it, but he was less than perfect. In recent years, there's been a lot of complaints about the details of what he did, but he was the guy out there blazing the trail, so I give him a lot of credit for that.

DG:  Let's circle back around to CFOAM for just a moment.  CFOAM, current and future, especially where it hits on the heat treat market.  Where would we see CFOAM?  You mentioned the fact that the mechanical properties are very strong, it could be used for floors and furnaces, it could be used for hearth piers, hearth rails, could be used for the sides of furnaces.  One of the issues in the heat treat market that we have to be careful about is, you know, the guys on the forklifts who smash the trays into the sides of the furnace during loading and unloading.  I assume there is some strength here in the CFOAM that you might not have another especially ceramic materials, but also maybe some of your metal walls, if you will.

BJ: The foam can be made in a wide range of densities too.  When you were here, I think I showed you two densities that we predominantly manufacture today. One is 20 pounds/cubic foot and the other is 30 pounds/cubic foot. But you can make it up to 90 pounds/cubic foot, which at that point it is massively strong and very high temperature, but not as insulating.  There is a trade-off between insulation and strength.  So what we can do for some of those applications is dial in "what is the appropriate mechanical properties versus thermal properties for an application?" because the technology is really robust that way. In fact, one of the challenges to new materials like this is deciding what is the thing I want to make this week.  Because you can offer all kinds of things, so you have to figure out what are the things you think your customers want.  If customers look at our properties and they're not exactly what they need, there is a good chance we could make some adjustments and make something with either more conductivity, less conductivity; in fact, there is a whole group of things we haven't talked about, which is the other end of the spectrum--very high thermal conductivity foams.  We have some foams that we can make with the thermal conductivity of aluminum at one-fifth the weight.  To me, is there a market?  Does this relate to heat treaters?  It's not obvious to me, and I'm not down on the details of that business, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if someone listening doesn't say, “You know, that's exactly what we need! A carbon that's very thermally conductive.”  So that's the other end of the spectrum.

DG:  So you can make the foam either thermally insulative or conductive, either way?

BJ:  That's right.  And we can bury the electrical properties through ten orders of magnitude, from 10 million ohm centimeters to .1 ohm centimeters.

DG:  The question that jumps into my mind, and this may not be a fair question to ask you, but let me ask it anyhow: The commercial viability of these CFOAM products in the heat treat market.  You can use them as heating elements, I assume.  I don't think we see much.  We see a lot of graphite heating elements, but heating elements, I assume for structural parts, perhaps.  The one that jumps to my mind, and I think I mentioned it to you when I was there, was radiant tubes, which are the metal tubes are somewhat, they have a life cycle, let's put it that way.  Because of thermal cycling, they do tend to, at some point in time, crack or whatever.  We have some companies that are making radiant tubes out of ceramic-type material, but there are sometimes issues with breakage.  My thinking is, is it possible that perhaps we could get coal based radiant tubes even, that are very strong yet very thermally conductive?

BJ:  Yes, I think such a thing would be possible.  I can't tell you that I could give it to you tomorrow afternoon, but absolutely.  I think the material can do it.  I think we can figure out how to actually make that on volume. I think that's very doable.

Another thing: the foam is porous.  Are there situations where you want to bring nitrogen in through the wall at really, really low speeds for some reason, while heating to very high temperature? I don't know; or any other gas--hydrogen or whatever.  I haven't had that need, but I'm not in that particular marketplace that might have that need.

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 #29: Heat Treating and Coal with Brian Joseph, CEO Touchstone Research Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #28: Heat Treat Modeling With Justin Sims

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

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 Modeling With Justin Sims

In this conversation, Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews Justin Sims of DANTE Solutions about heat treat modeling. As the heat treat world moves farther way from mysterious black box processes, find out how the latest advances in heat treat simulation software can help your company model specific processes and materials in advance, leading to less guesswork and more profit.

Click the play button below to listen.

Transcript: Heat Treat Modeling With Justin Sims

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

We're going to talk to Justin Sims, lead engineer at DANTE Solutions, Inc., about heat treat modeling.  It's a pretty interesting topic.  With all the advances and sensors and computing power, the heat treat world is moving further and further away from the mysterious black box processes of yesteryear and is allowing companies to model specific processes and specific materials in advance so that there is less guesswork and more profit.  DANTE provides the means by which companies can accurately predict what is going to happen to their part during the heat treat process.

DG: Justin is not only the lead engineer at DANTE Solutions, he is also the author of an article that just appeared in the March 2020 issue of Heat Treat Today and the title of the article was Process Innovation To Reduce Distortion During Gas Quenching. It was a pretty interesting article, something worth reading if you haven't already.  It has to do with DANTE controlled gas quench.

JS:  I got my bachelors in mechanical engineering degree from Cleveland State.  I graduated back in 2015.  I actually started interning at DANTE in 2014 and went full-time in 2016.  I've been the lead/principal engineer at DANTE with mainly responsibilities of managing projects, training our DANTE users, and offering support to our DANTE users.  I helped develop our patent-pending DANTE controlled gas quenching process, which you had just mentioned, and then also a little bit of IT, marketing, sales, and shipping. Being a smaller company, we can kind of do it all.

 

Fig. 1: Bevel gear axial distortion comparison for an oil quench, high pressure gas quench, and a DANTE Controlled Gas Quench

 

DG: Tell us briefly about DANTE.

JS: DANTE Solutions is an engineering consulting and software company.  We offer consulting services as well as licensing our software.  We mainly focus on the aerospace industry, the auto industry quite a bit as well, and we've been starting to get into the mining and energy sectors also.  As I said, we are a smaller company.  There are six of us right now. Two to three guys mainly focus on the software side, and the rest of us focus on more of the training, the support, and the consulting side of the business.

DG: DANTE is located near Cleveland, OH, and Lynn Ferguson, who has been in the heat treat industry for many, many years, was one of the founders. Let's talk about the genesis of the software. Would you say the software is the core product that DANTE Solutions offers?

JS: Yes, it is. We mainly stay in consulting to stay current and to give those users who don't have the capability to run our software (either they don't have the hardware or they don't have the analysts to be able to do such a thing), so we still offer our consulting services for them. But mainly, software is our main line of business.  DANTE was actually formed back in 1982 as Deformation Control Technology, Inc., and we changed our name in 2014 to actually reflect more of the software side, so that's when we changed to DANTE Solutions, Inc.

The project itself that DANTE came out of actually started in 1994 and 1995.  It was a collaboration between Ford, GM, Eaton Corp. and then four national labs--I believe they were Los Alamos, Sandia, Oak Ridge, and Lawrence Livermore--and then us as Deformation Control Technology.  The whole project came out because those large automakers were claiming millions of dollars of lost scrap from distortion.  It was starting to become a major issue and they wanted a way to be able to model the process and be able to optimize the process a little bit better.  After that project ended, DANTE somehow ended up with the software, which has worked out well, as we've been able to commercialize it and we've been updating all the material models and the material database for the last 20 years.  It's actually come quite a long way.

DG:  How did you segue over from auto industry into aerospace?

JS:  It just happens that the aerospace components cost a whole lot more than the auto industry components.  It was a natural fit once they realized that this software was viable and could do what they needed it to do.  And aerospace seems to be more receptive to modeling because their parts are so expensive.

DG:  Let's try to put a little flesh on the bones here. For a manufacturer who has their own in-house heat treat for aerospace, automotive, energy or whatever, what makes this software attractive?  What makes it viable?  Why would someone want it, and why and how do they use it?

JS:  Let's start with viability.  The first thing is that it is easy to use.  DANTE is a set of material routines that link with Abaqus or Ansys finite element solvers.  These are solvers that engineers and analysts in the industry already know pretty well, so there is not a lot of learning of new software.  DANTE is just a material model, so all you're really responsible for is the material name and what microstructural phases you're starting with.  Then we have the ability to modify a few of our control parameters, activating different models; we've introduced stress relaxation, carbon separation, carbide dissolution, and all these different models that you can activate.  But the biggest thing that trips people up . . . [is] understanding your process.  We like to work with people a lot on trying to help them understand what type of thermal behavior their processes are actually imparting on components.  We've done a lot of work with setting up their essentially quench probes and be able to turn around and be able to take that back to heat transfer coefficients that get put into the model. As far as DANTE is concerned, it is fairly easy to use.

We've also developed what they're calling ACT (Ansys Customization Toolkit).  It is essentially a series of buttons where you would click on these buttons, fill out information, and then essentially run your models. Abaqus, for the new version of DANTE, we've also developed a plug-in that essentially does the same thing.  So DANTE has become very point-and-click.  In this world, I think people like that simplicity.

Fig. 2: Axial distortion of a press quenched bevel gear

The next big one would be the accuracy that everybody is concerned about.  Our accuracy is due to the models that we use and the algorithms that we employ.  There are two types of accuracy.  I've touched on the boundary condition accuracy, and that is how your process behaves thermally.  That accuracy can be tough to get.  It's very doable and we've helped people achieve some really amazing accuracy.  The relationship I like to use here is people know static loading models and a lot of engineers have run static loading models.  The loads that you put on these static models are going to determine what deflections you get.  If your load is not correct, then your deflection will not be correct.  In heat treat modeling, the thermal boundary condition is your load.  The more accurate your heat transfer coefficient can be, the more accurate your results are.  But, with that being said, you can still gain a lot of valuable information from being close enough.  We'll talk a little bit about that with the uses and whatnot.

The first important model type that we use is the mechanical model.  We use a multiphase internal state variable model.  A conventional plasticity model considers stress as a function of strain only, where the internal state variable model actually accounts for the history of deformation by relating the stress to dislocation density.  It actually accounts for the history of deformation, which is very important as the steel goes through all the stress reversals that it does going through the process.  Our mechanical model defines each phase, so austinite, pearlite, ferrite, bainites martensite, tempered martensite, all of them, as a function of carbon, temperature, strain and strain rate.  It also accounts for the trip phenomenon.

For our phase transformation model, we like to use analytical models instead of TTT CCT diagrams, and we do this because you don't get any transformation strain information out of the diagram.  So you have no idea how much it is deforming.  In order to figure that out, we like to use dilatometry tests to fit to our analytical models.  We also account for carbide growth and dissolution during carburizing, which is becoming a major point of interest due to the high alloy content of some of these steels that they're now trying to carburize.

DG:  Let's talk a bit more about where manufacturers, who have their own in-house heat treat, might use DANTE's software tool.

JS:  One of the big things we like to use it for is what we call sensitivity analysis.  This would be, "what happens if my normal process has a little bit of variation?"  Or, "what happens if my process parameters change a little bit?" We've also worked into the model now normal material variation.  So if your alloy content is a little on the high side, how would the material behave?  If it's a little on the low side, how will it behave? [This] is a big deal.  One example would be, "I just designed a new part and I want to make sure that it behaves given the range that I know my process can vary."  All processes will vary.  This is no way to make the process exactly the same every time.  Also, in the sensitivity, you can ask the question, “What process variable is a distortion or stress most sensitive to?"  By finding out what process variables cause the most sensitivity, then those are the process variables you really need to pay attention to during processing, then the other ones you can just make sure they're in range and leave them alone.

Development and design are two of the big ones that we're trying to get out there that this software can be used for.  Everybody knows that it can be used for troubleshooting.  Once something goes wrong, yes, sure the software is great and we help figure out a problem; but why not find the problem before it ever even happens?  We've been trying to get people to use it for development of new carburizing and nitriding schedules as well as new recipe and design, and even novel processes.  You had mentioned our DANTE controlled gas quench.  That actually was conceived through all the modeling that we do and watching the response of the material and saying, “Wait a second.  If we can control the martensite transformation rate, we can really control the distortion, so let's see if we can do this.”  Things like that can come out of the software.  Design as well, of optimizing shapes for quench.  You can even do quench to fit, which is, "I know my part distorts this much, so let me machine it distorted and then it will fall into shape."  Optimizing processes.  All of that can be done through design development, and you can find these problems before they ever happen.

Another really big one that I like, and Lynn, our owner, is really keen on this one, is the understanding of your process.  When you start to set up these models, you have to ask a lot of questions about your process.  What is the HTC of my process, which relates back to agitation in the tanks, part racking, flow directions?  You really need to know times and temperatures of every step in your process.  So not just the heat to quench, but what about all those transfers in between?  All of that needs to be done.  So you end up asking a lot of questions like that.

The other one that I always like to say is that the heat treat software removes the black box.  In the past, you know what goes in and you know what comes out, but what happens in the middle is kind of a mystery.  The software helps you figure out what exactly goes on during your process.  It can be very eye-opening.

Fig. 3: Minimum Principal stress of a carburized and oil quenched spur gear

DG:  I've talked with James Jan and Andrew Martin over at AVL, and we talked about a variety of ways they use some of their software, and they mentioned that they work with you guys as well, and they were talking about not even just like a quench agitation, flow direction, and things of that sort, but part orientation as it goes into a quench.  I assume that would be something also that you guys would be able to help analyze, right?  Which way to even put the part into the quench?

JS:  Sure, sure.  And we've done that.  The one that comes to mind is a long landing gear.  This landing gear was about 3 meters in length, and we looked at even slight angles going into the quench tank can have serious consequences on the distortion.  That is definitely something that we've looked at in the past.

DG:  Just that orientation would help, but maybe eliminate vapor stage, or whatever, I assume?  Or pockets?

JS:  Right. And even beyond that, it sets up thermal gradients in different locations of the part.  So now instead of cooling one section faster, you're cooling it a little slower and that kind of thing.  That also relates back to actual vapor stages and how bubbles get trapped.  But that goes back to defining boundary conditions, which is where software like AVL's FIRE can really be helpful in understanding flow patterns.  There is a beneficial relationship there.

DG:  There are a host of different materials that people are using.  How broad is the database, as far as the different types of materials, that you can analyze and model?

JS:  That is a good question.  We have a lot of low alloy, medium alloy, and carburizing grades of steel, the 1000 series, the 8600 series, 9300 series, those types of materials.  We've also worked with some of the high alloy aerospace grades like C64 and the Pyrowear 53 and that sort of thing.  But right now, it's all steel.  There is a lot of talk about being able to do aluminum.  We get that question a lot.

DG:  I was wondering about that specifically- aluminum and/or of course, when we talk aerospace, we're talking titanium.  So titanium is not on the table at the moment?

JS:  It is, but it isn't.  The interesting thing is that there is a phenomena precipitation hardening that goes on in aluminum and titanium.  But it also goes on in these high alloy steels.  It is a secondary hardening mechanism.  We've been working on that and we feel that once we can handle secondary hardening in steel, then the jump to aluminum and titanium should be pretty straightforward.

DG:  So to recap, for those of us who are not as well-versed in the product as you are, basically you've got a simulation software that takes into account the material that is being used, also the thermal process (the recipe), which would include both a controlled heat up and potentially a controlled quench.  Is that a reasonable way to describe it in a very broad way?

JS:  Yes. And also, even the steps before that, like carburizing.  If the part is carburized, you would carburize it first.  Or nitriding; we've just introduced those models.  You can literally do the entire process.  And it's not just quenching either.  We've done martempering, austempering, normalizing, all of these things.  Most all normal thermal processing, DANTE can handle.

DG:  The last question I want to ask is, Who is the ideal person/company that would really find the product/service that you're providing useful? I know you mentioned aerospace and automotive, but can we be more specific than that? Where are you finding the most success?

Fig. 4: Displacement versus temperature curves showing the shift in martensite start temperature for 3 carbon levels

JS:  That's a tough question. Generally, everybody that has used our software has found real benefit in it.  We've tried to get testimonials from a lot of folks, but this can be difficult because of their companies.  But from Cummins, we've gotten good responses and also from GM we've gotten good responses.  One of them has used it to actually introduce new material and replace legacy material that is now saving them quite a bit of money.  GM has used it to look at process design and optimization.  But I would say mainly the people that are going to benefit the most are the folks that have an analyst to be able to do the simulation almost on a daily basis.  It's one of those things where the more you do, the more you see and the more you understand what is happening.  But really anybody that does heat treatment can benefit from understanding what's going on in their process.

DG:  You mentioned Cummins, and I'm looking at your website, and I just want to read a paragraph:

DANTE heat treat simulation software has been a great boon to Cummins.  Since we've started using their software, we have gone through several projects that have increased our understanding of heat treatment and some of which have saved us production costs.  One example was enabling us to gain the leverage needed to make a material and process change on a legacy product that is now saving us at least 25% on material costs.  The team at DANTE Solutions has always been very accommodating and is very quick to give assistance and feedback whenever troubles arise, even when the troubles are caused by other parts of the simulation and not DANTE itself.  I look forward to working with DANTE team in the coming years as we expand our list of engineers who use this software. -- Brian W. at Cummins

So that leads me to one other question.  When a person interacts with you, are they buying software as a service?  Is it cloud-based or is it something that they purchase a license for one computer, one user?  How does it work?

JS:  There are a couple of different ways.  They can lease it annually or they can essentially buy the software and lease a license annually.  The software can go either on their computer or it can go on a server at their company.  We also have options for corporations where you can essentially get software at different locations.  We have a lot of options and we can work with customers if they [have] unique needs.  That's one of the benefits of being a smaller company, we're pretty flexible like that.

DG:  DANTE's mission statement from their website has a nice ring to it: “DANTE Solutions is determined to promote the use of simulation in the heat treat industry.  From design to troubleshooting, DANTE Solutions believes everyone can benefit from a little simulation in their life.”

If you'd like to get in touch with Justin Sims at DANTE, please email me, Doug Glenn, directly at doug@heattreattoday.com and I'll put you in touch with Justin.

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 #28: Heat Treat Modeling With Justin Sims Read More »