Heat Treat Radio #96: Making the Leap to Laser Heat Treat with Nic Willis

Doug Glenn: We’ve interviewed you before, and it’s good to have you back. You are one of our 40 Under 40 Class of 2020 winners. Give a brief history about yourself.

Nic Willis: I’ve been in the heat treat world for about 5 years now. I’m the metallurgist and heat treat supervisor at RIDGID® TOOLS in Elyria, Ohio. We have a captive heat treating department where we specialize in neutral hardening, carburizing, carbonitriding, salt tempering. We do some induction hardening, vacuum hardening, and flame hardening, as well. There are a lot of heat treating applications at RIDGID, and it’s pretty exciting.

The Project: Bringing Induction Hardening In-House (02:56)

Doug Glenn: RIDGID is a manufacturer with in-house heat treat. You do some outsourcing, but for the most part, you do your own heat treating.

Let’s talk a bit about your recent decision to change from one type of heat treating over to another type of heat treating.

Nic Willis: This particular project started when I was tasked with finding a way to bring an outsourced process in-house to our facility. That process was the induction hardening of a particular product line. I began by reaching out to different machine builders of induction hardening equipment.

One thing I noticed when I started to get some quotes was how much the tooling cost was going to be and what percentage of the project that was going to account for. Being somewhat new to induction hardening at the time, I was really taken aback.

We had also seen some quality issues with cracking of these components. I just happened to listen to an episode of Heat Treat Radio that had to do with laser hardening. After I got done listening to the podcast, I reached out to Laser Hard, Inc. We started a conversation about learning more about laser hardening and if it was a fit for this particular product line.

Doug Glenn: So, you heard the podcast episode Heat Treat Radio #11: Laser Heat Treating with Laser Hard and decided to check it out.

Did you consider any other possibilities besides bringing an induction process in or laser?

Nic Willis: It was pretty much between those two technologies. These components, like a lot of parts that are going to make use of either of these two technologies, have one area we want to keep ductile and then another (contact) area we want to have wear resistance. These particular components will get furnace-hardened first, and then they go out for the selective hardening process.

Induction vs. Laser Heat Treating (06:48)

Doug Glenn: What did the rest of the process look like? How long did it take, who was involved, what were some of the key questions that needed to be answered before a final decision could be made?

Nic Willis: For this particular application, it just so happened that the specifications that we required were a good fit for the laser process, namely case depth. One of the limitations of laser hardening versus induction is you’re not able to get as deep of a case with laser as you can with induction. For these components, that wasn’t really a factor. So, there was some initial vetting that went on.

After that, we sent some sample parts to Laser Hard that they would have processed. It took some testing on that end to get their parameters set up, and they cut up a lot of parts to check the case depth. Once we got that dialed in, the parts would’ve come back here to RIDGID where we did some life testing. We have a test apparatus that we use that basically cycles these parts to failure. From there, it turned out that these met or exceeded the life of the induction hardened components. At that point, we would have updated the drawings and approved laser hardening as a substitute process.

The Cost (08:34)

Doug Glenn: Do you have any sense or was there any calculation done of what you anticipated the cost savings would be?

Nic Willis: I can’t get into any specifics; but in order to get any type of substitution like this off the ground, it needs to be somewhat, or at least, cost neutral.

Doug Glenn: How about the maintenance of the equipment — laser versus induction?

Nic Willis: Like I mentioned before, the maintenance of the coils themselves is something that you don’t have to account for with laser. Any type of specialized tooling for laser is going to be on the work-holding end of the spectrum which can be adapted after the fact to improve cycle times and things like that.

Laser does not make use of a quenchant. The parts self-quench, meaning that the core material doesn’t get heated up and is cool enough to quench out the heated area. Anybody that’s familiar with induction knows that the quenching process can be kind of messy and needs to be contained.

The Winner: Laser Heat Treating (10:30)

Doug Glenn: Those are all good additional cost savings items. Laser won the day on this one. Have there been other parts that you’ve looked at potentially going to laser but decided to not do it?

Nic Willis: Yes. In Elyria, the parts that we make are our pressing tools to make our pipe wrenches and threading machines. With the threading machines, there is a lot of gearing. We’ve looked at some of our gears that we flame hardened, and they’re a lot bigger. It’s just not a good fit with laser. You would have to go tooth by tooth, which is going to really increase your cycle time. In those parts, you run into that issue with case step requirement.

Doug Glenn: Can you tell us what laser hardening is?

Nic Willis: It’s a form of selective hardening where you want some of the part to have a hard case for wear resistance. The rest of the part keeps its ductility. In this case, you’re using a laser — rather than an induction field or a flame — to heat up this specific area that you want to harden.

Doug Glenn: You mentioned “part holding.” I don’t want you to give away more than you can and want to respect all the propriety measures. Is this something where you’re spinning a part and laser, so you’re just actually lasering a specific area?

Nic Willis: Correct.

Doug Glenn: I know with flame hardening they’re actually spinning the part as it goes — or they can spin the part. Is laser something you can do that with?

Nic Willis: Yes, absolutely. But then you’re starting to talk about additional costs to build a specialized machine to do the hardening process. For me, I wanted something “off the shelf,” for lack of a better term. I didn’t want a super specialized piece of equipment.

Doug Glenn: In the decision-making process itself, did you and the team require to see laser hardening be done other places or did you work basically just with Laser Hard and make sure they could prove the process? How much of a pioneer were you willing to be? Were you willing to be one of the first people to ever do laser heat treating?

Nic Willis: There is a company that is pretty close to Laser Hard, and some of their products are laser hardened (it’s not the same but it’s a similar application). I was aware of them. Laser hardening has been around for a long time. I think what’s made it more attractive nowadays is that the laser equipment itself has become more affordable. It’s not a new process, by any means. I would assume that it’s been around since lasers have been around.

Success with Laser Heat Treating for RIDGID® (16:40)

Doug Glenn: You’ve been through the decision-making process, and you’ve got it up and running. I assume you’re happy with what’s going on now. You’ve got it down now, and it’s a relatively smooth process?

Nic Willis: Absolutely. We’re looking at bringing the process in-house in the next few years. I’d like to say that it’s a dream of mine to see it done here on site in Elyria.

Doug Glenn: Looking back on the whole process of moving from wanting to bring it in-house, to deciding to go with laser — is there anything you would’ve done differently now, knowing what you know?

Nic Willis: That’s a good question. I think one thing that I really learned through the process was anytime you’re switching from a tried-and-true process to something new, whatever your reasons may be, it takes some time to get people on board. [blocktext align="left"]I think one thing that I really learned through the process was anytime you’re switching from a tried-and-true process to something new, whatever your reasons may be, it takes some time to get people on board.[/blocktext]

Like I mentioned earlier, we were setting the parameters with the laser, doing the metallurgical testing, doing the life testing — it wasn’t a bang, bang, bang type thing. More and more people were brought into the discussion. The commercial side has to be addressed, as well. There are always some question marks when you’re moving from one supplier to another, and that took some time.

I don’t know if I’d do anything different, but I’d tell myself to be a little more patient, given the opportunity.

Doug Glenn: That’s probably the great lesson, honestly. It does take patience and a little perseverance because you’ve got to prove the process. You’ve got to prove it, not only metallurgically, like you said, but you’ve got to prove it commercially.

Nic Willis: From the conceptual stage to when we actually were putting parts into the field, it was probably about two years.

Doug Glenn: When you first started, how long did you think it was going to take?

Nic Willis: I thought it would be relatively quick!

Doug Glenn: Right. A 6-month process turns into 2 years, easily, huh?

Nic Willis: Exactly.

Doug Glenn: Are there any other thoughts regarding the whole process of that transition or laser heat treating or anything that you’d like to share?

Nic Willis: A challenge that I’ve run into is you see success with one product line, and you want to see how far you can take it and expand it to these other product lines. We talked about how sometimes it’s not a good fit. I mentioned that with some of the gears and larger cylindrical-type components. I think induction definitely still has its place.

I’m working on some projects to bring some of our induction parts in-house. In these cases, based on case depth, part geometry, and things like that, induction, in some cases, is a better fit than laser. Although in this particular case, it made sense to switch from induction to laser, it’s not always a one-for-one type switch.

Doug Glenn: That’s excellent advice; you’ve got to take each part in its turn and figure out which is the best process for it.

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