Four vacuum furnaces were recently shipped to a major casting company in Arizona, three with a free work area of 54″ W x 41″ H x 72″ L and one with a free work area of 24″ W x 24″ H x 36″ L.
The supplier, G-M Enterprises, based in Corona, California, announced that all four are 2-bar furnaces with innovative hot zone design and construction. A 1200 gpm water cooling system was included in the installation.
ASM International recently posted an instructive article on the effect of aging temperature on impact energy and yield strength on AF 1410 steel, complete with a helpful graph displaying maximum and minimum results on both at various temperature ranges.
Steve Metz, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Applied Products, Inc.
A Michigan-based company that specializes in austempering heat treatment technology recently announced expansion plans that will include a 51,000-square-foot heat treatment plant in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
The new location for Applied Process, Inc., will contain six furnaces and is expected to be fully operational in the 3rd quarter of 2018 to serve their customers in the automotive, agriculture, aerospace, heavy truck, railroad, mining sectors, as well as the military, throughout the Midwest and South. The company’s plants in Livonia, Michigan, and Oshkosh, Wisconsin, will remain in operation, the latter housing the world’s largest integral quench batch austempering furnace which is capable of austempering parts up to 20,000 lbs. in weight.
Rusty Rainbolt, plant manager, Applied Products, Inc., Fort Smith
“The additional capacity in Fort Smith will allow us to continue to offer industry-leading levels of customer service, quality and turn time,” said Steve Metz, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Applied Process, Inc.. “The new facility will allow us to expand into new markets and serve a broader geographic customer base.”
Rusty Rainbolt, who has been with Applied Process for three years on the sales team, will be plant manager at the Fort Smith site.
Leading commercial heat treat company, Paulo, provides an excellent primer on heat treat scale, what causes it, and what to consider when determining whether to remove it or prevent it.
From the article: “Manufacturers and heat treaters each have methods at their disposal to deal with scale problems, but tradeoffs exist that depend a great deal on part makeup, specified heat treatment and what happens next with a given part.”
In honor of Presidents' Day, Heat TreatToday takes a cue from the U.S. penny, where we find embossed on the copper coin the image of one of the two U.S. presidents celebrated on this day, President Abraham Lincoln (16th). The link below will lead you to an article on the basics of heat treating copper and copper alloys; their end products, including wire and cable, sheet, strip, plate, rod, bars, tubing, forgings, castings, and powder metallurgy shapes; and the purposes for heat treating these metals, such as homogenizing, annealing, stress relieving, and precipitation hardening.
Aluminum sheets and heat treating services are among the categories of upwardly trending activity that Tony Uphoff recently reported on at Thomasnet.com. In addition to how well each area is doing above historical averages, the analysis includes this tidbit: “according to U.S. census data, 96 percent of heat treatment companies employ fewer than 100 workers; 68 percent employ fewer than 20.”
The monthly heat treat industry report released by the Industrial Heating Equipment Association (IHEA) showed year-high industrial capacity utilization coming in with a 77.1% figure, the highest number seen in recent history.
Industrial Capacity Utilization is at a 12-month high.
The report covers roughly a dozen other key indicators important to many in the heat treating industry. The January report also showed increases in auto production, new home starts, and a handful of other regularly-reported indices. There were some falling numbers: steel consumption and capital expenditures both dipped in December.
Other indices in the report include: metal prices (aluminum, copper, steel, nickel), the purchasing managers index, durable goods shipments, and factory orders to mention a few.
The report does not only report on indices, it also includes commentary from IHEA’s economic consultant who is keenly involved in the heat treating industry.
To receive these monthly reports, contact Anne Goyer, Executive Director at IHEA.
David Llewellyn, Mizuno’s director of research and development for golf
In the quest for more opportunities for off-center hit performance, the research and development team at Japanese sports equipment and sportswear company utilized advanced forging and heat treating techniques in the design of the recently debuted Mizuno GT180 lineup of woods, “with an obvious emphasis on precision adjustability . . . [and] a fresh commitment to speed.”
Club designers have been using high-strength titanium alloy SP-700 for a while, but precision processing increases design possibilities, says David Llewellyn, Mizuno’s director of research and development for golf. The new driver boasts multiple weights and three tracks to control flight and spin.
A supplier of plasma-based heat and surface treatment solutions to the metals industry has delivered a high-speed annealing line for precision stainless steel and nickel alloy tubes for a producer of small size precision tubing.
Relative Gas Supply Cost Notes: [a] Based on a minimum usage of 2830 cubic meters (100,000 cubic feet) per month. [b] All gases compared to nitrogen whose relative cost is unity. [c] Based on liquid supply.Heat treaters use a variety of gases with vacuum furnaces during the processing cycle in partial pressure operation, for backfilling to atmospheric pressure at the end of the processing cycle, and for cooling/quenching. In this article, VAC AERO describes the most common of these gases — (in order of frequency of use) nitrogen, argon, hydrogen and helium — as well as other common gases such as various hydrocarbons and ammonia (for vacuum carburizing/carbonitriding) and specialty gases such as neon (for certain electronics applications), and analyzes their uses and value in various vacuum heat treating processes. In addition, their relative cost per 100,000 cubic feet, the liquid properties and physical properties of common backfill gases, and the conversion between common pressure and vacuum units are explored.
