What are the heat treat tech trends we're seeing in Heat Treat Today? Perhaps you read the Tech Trends article earlier this year predicting what trends in the industry will continue to develop in 2022. We can see that a point made by Jim Oakes, president of Super Systems, Inc., overlaps all of the trends in this line up: "The pillars in technology remain quality and efficiency with a growing emphasis on connectivity and carbon footprint visibility." Check out the 6 trends below!
Thermal Efficiency To Decrease Carbon Footprint
The technical thoughts that we're seeing surrounding this awareness for thermal efficiency surround the technology of induction. "[Induction] is also a very efficient process," commented Michael J. Zaharof, manager customer information & marketing at Inductoheat, "as induction power supplies are only powered on when needed compared to batch processing (like those requiring an oven)." Additionally, Girish Dahake, senior vice president of Global Applications at Ambrell Corporation, describes this efficient process saying, "The workpiece is placed in the coil where this field induces a current, generating heat in the workpiece. The water-cooled coil is cool to the touch and is placed around or adjacent to the work piece. It does not touch the workpiece and heat is generated by the induced current flowing in the workpiece."
In the news, there have been companies looking to replace old gas generators with no automatic process controls and lacking in dew point efficiency. The resulting significant CO2 savings for heat treating operations is in line with the trend of pursuing efficiency for the sake of decreasing carbon footprint.
Read more: "Tempering: 4 Perspectives — Which makes sense for you?" and Why Induction Heating Is a Green Technology
Technology for Remote Monitoring and Integrated Control
We've seen this in the episode with Matt Wright at C3 Data in his description of integrated control of various systems. Additionally, he related that flow of information in heat treat facilities is a major challenge: "When I look at our industry, one of the things that is the biggest challenge is the flow of information — getting information from where it resides to where it needs to be in the format that it needs to be. I think the technologies that have been successful in our industry are technologies that help lubricate that flow, if you will."
Read more: "Heat Treat Radio: Reimagining Furnace Compliance with C3 Data’s Matt Wright"
Molten Salt Quenchants and Salt Reclamation
This hot -- or rather salty -- topic appeared on Heat Treat Radio with Bill Disler at AFC-Holcroft noting that modern processes allow for 99% of salt in quenching to be reclaimed. The manner that salt is used as a quenchant is different from oil: "With salt, you’ll come out of the quench with some liquid salt on it, you’ll go into a washer but that salt then dissolves back into the water. Generally, there is a multiphase wash with a wash/rinse/rinse. Then, after we get a certain percentage of salt in the wash solution, we thermally evaporate the water off leaving the salt back where it can be reintroduced into the quench tank."
Another representative from the company, Bill Coburn, was recently quoted in a press release that highlighted this feature in a recent installation at an agricultural product manufacturer. While these examples are so far quite consistent within the company, we expect more conversations about this reuse-and-recycle opportunity to be forthcoming.
Read more: "Heat Treat Radio: The Greenness and Goodness of Salt Quenching with Bill Disler" and "Batch Austemper Heat Treat Line for Agricultural Equipment Supplier"
Focus on Vacuum Furnaces
Looking back at the months of June and July, the press release ratio of atmosphere to vacuum furnace focus was 3:9. Check out the latest news in the industry in these press releases:
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- Redline Chambers Joins Heat Treat Product Provider
- Horizontal Nitriding System Delivered at Hydro Heat Treat Location
- Aerospace Manufacturer Awaits Heat Treat Vacuum Furnace
- Heat Treat Provider Increases HIP Capacity in Greenville, SC
- AM Heat Treat Solutions Expected From New Partnership
- Vacuum Heat Treat Capabilities Expand for Magnetic Shields Ltd
- Heat Treat Capabilities Increase for Tooling and Machinery Component Manufacturer
- Western PA Heat Treat Facility VOQ Passes Startup Protocol
- Sundram Fasteners Ltd. Expands Vacuum Furnace Capabilities
Electric Heating Systems
One of our partners, heat processing interviewed Mark Bula at H2 Green Steel in a feature revealing how the company was commited to electric generation as part of the industrial process. While there is a fair amount of criticism from the energy sector about what this conversion value could realistically look like, the attempts to make electric happen continue to grow.
Read more: "Going Carbon Free: An Interview with H2 Green Steel"
Digital Transformation and Application of IIoT Technologies
This trend will take a variety of forms, particularly with the catchy term, "predictive maintenance." Learn more about IIoT here, but for some technical conversations that have continued into 2022, turn to the Heat Treat Radio podcast with Fives North American Combustion.
[blockquote author="Justin Dzik, Fives North American Combustion" style="1"]The CertiFire™ is, as you already stated, an automated tuning device for temperature uniformity certifications. I think pretty much everybody that’s going to watch this podcast is probably going to know that they can be extremely time consuming to do, they take a lot of time and a lot of intelligence to actually tune the process. This device takes all of that and does it all itself. It does all the automated burner tuning, all the valve adjustments, it locks it all in and tunes it for whatever class uniformity you need.[/blockquote]
Read more: "Heat Treat Radio: Algorithmic Combustion Tuning With Justin Dzik and Ben Witoff at Fives"
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