TEMPERING

Car Bottom Furnace Increases Large Component Heat Treat for Solar Atmospheres

Solar Atmospheres of Western PA recently commissioned their third car bottom air furnace. This Class 2 air furnace has a maximum operating temperature of 1350°F measures 60” wide x 38” high x 168” deep.

The newly installed equipment, manufactured by Heat Treat Equipment Inc., joins two other HTE car bottom furnaces that are 14’ long and 20’ long respectively.

“After successfully hardening in vacuum at 1850°F +/- 10°F, the fully hardened die was transferred to the air car bottom furnace for the triple temper operation of 1025°F +/- 10°F.” – Bob Hill, President, Solar Atmospheres WPA and Michigan
Source: Solar Atmospheres
Source: Solar
Robert (Bob) Hill, FASM
President
Solar Atmospheres of Western PA
Source: Solar Atmospheres

Bob Hill, president of Solar Atmospheres of Western PA and Michigan, states, “the addition of this large air tempering/aging equipment compliments our five (5) state of the art vacuum car bottom furnaces very nicely. Instead of hardening and triple tempering this 6000 pound H13 die exclusively in a vacuum environment, Solar can save our customers and our company over 100 hours of valuable and expensive vacuum processing time.”

He continues, “After successfully hardening in vacuum at 1850°F +/- 10°F, the fully hardened die was transferred to the air car bottom furnace for the triple temper operation of 1025°F +/- 10°F. These large and uniform car bottom furnaces are a win/win for both the customer and for production — not exclusively for heavy parts, but also when treating long components.”

This press release is available in its original form here.


Find Heat Treating Products And Services When You Search On Heat Treat Buyers Guide.Com

Car Bottom Furnace Increases Large Component Heat Treat for Solar Atmospheres Read More »

Common Automotive Heat Treat Processes To Get Into Gear

How long have you been heat treating automotive gears? Which thermal processing techniques do your operations gravitate towards? In this best of the web article, uncover some of the common heat treatment functions and the properties they create in gears. Let us know what you think of this general overview of the world of heat treating gears in our Reader Feedback form!

Contact us with your Reader Feedback!

Additionally, when you read to the end of the article, future trends that we can anticipate for heat treaters in the automotive industry are offered; as one might guess, they include digital and energy-saving technologies.

An excerpt: “Automotive gear heat treatment (process) includes two aspects: firstly, conventional heat treatment such as annealing, normalizing, quenching, tempering, and quenching and tempering; secondly, surface heat treatment, which encompasses methods like surface quenching (e.g., induction quenching, laser quenching) and chemical heat treatment (e.g., carburizing, carbonitriding, nitriding, nitrocarburizing).”

Read the entire article from Beyond Gears via LinkedIn, by clicking here: “Characteristics and Development Trends in Automotive Gear Heat Treatment


Find Heat Treating Products And Services When You Search On Heat Treat Buyers Guide.Com

Common Automotive Heat Treat Processes To Get Into Gear Read More »

Heat Treat Tips: Testing & Compliance

During the day-to-day operation of heat treat departments, many habits are formed and procedures followed that sometimes are done simply because that’s the way they’ve always been done. One of the great benefits of having a community of heat treaters is to challenge those habits and look at new ways of doing things. Heat Treat Today’s 101 Heat Treat Tips, tips and tricks that come from some of the industry’s foremost experts, were initially published in the FNA 2018 Special Print Edition, as a way to make the benefits of that community available to as many people as possible. This special edition is available in a digital format here.

Today we continue an intermittent series of posts drawn from the 101 tips. The tips for this post can be found in the FNA edition under Hardness Testing, CQI-9 Compliance, and Hardening/Tempering


Heat Treat Tip #22

Properly preparing a hardness sample can save time and money.

Inspection Mistakes That Cost

Rockwell hardness testing requires adherence to strict procedures for accurate results.  Try this exercise to prove the importance of proper test procedures.

  • A certified Rc 54.3 +/- 1 test block was tested three times and the average of the readings was Rc 54 utilizing a flat anvil.  Water was put on the anvil under the test block and the next three readings averaged Rc 52.1.
  • Why is it so important that samples are clean, dry, and properly prepared?
  • If your process test samples are actually one point above the high spec limit but you are reading two points lower, you will ship hard parts that your customer can reject.
  • If your process test samples are one point above the low spec limit but you are reading two points lower, you may reprocess parts that are actually within specification.
  • It is imperative that your personnel are trained in proper sample preparation and hardness testing procedures to maximize your quality results and minimize reprocessing.

Submitted by Young Metallurgical Consulting


Heat Treat Tip #25

CQI-9 Best Practices

Whether you need to meet rigid CQI-9 standards or not, what are the top 3, nay 4 best practices that nearly every in-house heat treat department ought to follow to make sure their pyrometer stuff is together?

Daily furnace atmosphere checks. Use an alternative method to verify your controls and sensors are operating properly and that there are no issue with your furnace or furnace gases.

Daily endothermic generator checks. Using an alternate method to verify your control parameter (dew point typically) or the gas composition is accurate will alleviate furnace control issues caused by bad endothermic gas.

Verify/validate your heat treat process every 2 hours OR make sure process deviations are automatically alarmed. this is a solid practice to ensure your controls and processes are running properly. This practice can help ensure that parts are being heat treated to the proper specification intended.

Conduct periodic system accuracy tests (SATs) per pre-defined timelines in CQI-9. Good pyrometry practices are an essential part of heat treatment. Because of the importance of temperature in heat treatment, ensure timeliness of all pyrometry practices addressing thermocouple usages, system accuracy tests, calibrations, and temperature uniformity surveys.

Submitted by Super Systems, Inc.


Heat Treat Tip #28

Control of Back Tempering With Induction Heat Treating

Induction heat treating is a selective hardening process. When hardening an induction path close to an area that had previously hardened, the heat from the hardening the second path tempers back the area that was previously hardened. This is a particularly common issue when tooth by tooth hardening of small gear teeth. Back tempering will reduce the hardness on the adjacent area and this effect may range from a few to over 10 HRC points.

Factors to Minimize Back Tempering 

Process Issue  Questions to ask 
Correct & repeatable placement of quenches  Can quench position be verified and set up repeatedly in the same position? 
Verification of quench flow  Is the quench flowing freely through the quench system? Are the quench holes blocked? Are the flowmeters reading accurately? 
Integrity of the quench  Was the percentage polymer measured? Is the quench quality okay? Is the quench contaminated? 
Inductor design  Is the inductor designed to minimize heat on the tip? Is the quench effectively cooling the part? 
Retained heat  Is a skip tooth hardening pattern being used to minimize residual heat in the induction hardening zone? Is the scan speed appropriate? 

Submitted by Midea Group, Inc.


 

Heat Treat Tips: Testing & Compliance Read More »

Suit of Armor Receives Heat Treatment

  Source: Metlab

Combining the ancient craft of blacksmithing with heat treating processes, artisan Robert (Mac) McPherson obtained the finish he wanted for a suit of armor designed after a late 15th-century statue of the patron saint of firefighters. The suit was fashioned with 125 hand-formed, then hardened and tempered metal plates.

Read more: Metlab Applies Black Oxide to a Suit of Armor by Metlab Blog

Suit of Armor Receives Heat Treatment Read More »

Heat Treating Race Car Parts with Quick Turnaround for Race Event

BOTW-50w  Source:  MetLabHeattreat.com

Metlab has worked with a number of NASCAR and Indy Racing Car Teams and also companies that restore antique cars, sports and muscle cars and has a history of heat treating race car parts that must endure severe conditions. Big B Manufacturing is a specialty machine shop located in Klingerstown, PA which specializes in design and engineering as well as machining of small and large components. They also make and race off road cars. Big B brought a project to Metlab that required the heat treating of four (4) link arms.  The arms are fabricated from 4130 steel and TIG welded with 4130 filler. The suspension parts are for Big B Manufacturing’s racing team.

Read More:  Heat Treating Race Car Parts with Quick Turnaround for Race Event by Metlab Heat Treat

Heat Treating Race Car Parts with Quick Turnaround for Race Event Read More »