Metalex Thermal Specialties is a Metal Treating Institute member and one of Colorado’s premier commercial heat treaters who prides themselves on high-quality and ultra-fast turnaround times. Originally founded in 2005, but recently acquired by James Legacy Corporation, they have been serving the industrial, medical, and automotive sectors as well as other industries in and around Colorado.
Their vacuum/bright hardening process sets them apart from other heat treaters. This process ensures parts come out clean with no discoloration. Bright hardening can be performed for a wide variety of processes.
Their pit furnaces allow them to perform age hardening under various atmospheres such as nitrogen, argon, or hydrogen. They even have a proprietary process for knife blades that allows them to be vacuum hardened without distortion. Metalex can even process some steels under vacuum that are typically oil hardened, which provides the required hardness without the issues oil hardening can create.
Metalex provides the following services:
- Bright hardening (vacuum hardening) of many tool steels, stainless steels, and more
- Oil hardening of 4000 series alloys, tool steels, and other oil harden steels
- Age hardening of stainless steels and aluminum
- Annealing of virtually any metals
- Stress relieving of martensitic and austenitic steels, and titanium
- Normalizing
- Brazing
- Induction hardening
- Carburizing
- Creep flattening
- Cryo processing
Equipment capabilities:
- 2-bar nitrogen quench large capacity furnace for vacuum hardening, age hardening, brazing, stress relieving, and annealing
- Small vacuum furnace for age hardening, and tempering
- Pit furnace for age hardening
- Pit carburizing furnace for oil hardening, carburizing, tempering, annealing, normalizing, and stress relieving
- 5 tempering ovens
- 2 tempering furnaces for age hardening and tempering
- 1 large capacity tempering furnace
- Ultra-low temperature freezer
Customer retention is high because of the quality they receive from the vacuum hardening, the cleanliness of their parts, and most importantly, the expertise and customer care from the people that make up Metalex. Combined, their employees have over 50 years of experience in the heat treatment industry. Everyone is focused on providing the best quality to their customers.
Metalex is excited about the future. In addition to the current renovation of their building, they are looking to greatly expand their capacity and capability over the next 5 to 10 years. One way to achieve that is with the future addition of another large vacuum furnace, and a much larger oil and carburizing IQ furnace. They are working to become Nadcap and MedAccred accredited, improving quality, and expanding the industries they serve.
