Heat Treat Today publishes eight print magazines a year, and included in each is a letter from the editor, Bethany Leone. This letter first appeared in the January/February 2024 Air & Atmosphere Heat Treat print edition.
Feel free to contact Bethany at bethany@heattreattoday.com if you have a question or comment.
Ever try to learn something that nobody seems to explain in clear English? While this is sometimes the reality in industries chock-full of competitive information, it can also be rooted in simply not knowing the limits of one’s knowledge.
It reminds me of June 2020, when I was entering the heat treat industry as an editor. I had a background in research, teaching, and writing, but certainly not materials science, manufacturing, or any type of engineering. There was an information gap I was keen on closing.
As a millennial, I went about this by supplementing my work hours with videos of iron ore being poured, reading blogs about specific temperature ranges involved in different heat treat processes, and scanning latest news in the four major Heat Treat Today industries (automotive, aerospace, medical, and energy) to learn what to ask about. The long and short of it was that I decided to “work smarter” by absorbing quick information bites that I could use as context for my work. And, at least to this young blood, the smart way means doing the job efficiently and effectively. (Notice how effectively follows efficiently.)
Now, there was absolutely nothing wrong with working smarter! The problem was that I was not getting any smarter. In fact, I was running into one problem a er another. Often, this was in the form of, “Does this equipment piece really matter to our readers?” or, “I understand time and temperature are important, but how do I write about them in this instance?” While I had absorbed information about the subject material, I
had not reconciled myself with the reality that arduous work was needed to learn information in a usable way.
My idea of working smarter at this stage, while helpful to an extent, was costing me the time and energy needed that could have been used to dedicate myself to learning one thing at a time, accepting the arduous nature of the process. Since then, I have taken opportunities to learn more
about equipment, processes, and heat treat resources through lectures, books, and richer knowledge sources. Now, because I have a richer understanding of industry information, I have the discernment needed to work smarter to be more effective.
As an example, this February issue is dedicated to annealing in roller hearth furnace systems. In preparation for this focus, I:
- consulted Dan Herring’s chapter about air/atmosphere furnaces and furnace classifications to identify why this equipment has such a name and some of the equipment highlights,
- talked with experts with a history in the heat treat industry about the equipment highlights,
- reviewed Heat Treat Radio’s episode on pusher versus continuous systems to better see how a pusher system functions,
- located technical articles written on annealing, and
- watched short videos of the system in action.
For a B2B editor, this list is sufficient . . . for now. But for heat treat decision makers working for manufacturers with in-house heat treat, more is needed. That is why we have assembled this magazine for you: to be better informed and so make better decisions. There are three features in the pages that follow to help give you greater insight into this one area of heat treat — roller hearth systems (see pages 10, 18, and 26 for these articles). Whether you are a veteran when it comes to using roller hearth furnace systems or a skeptical observer from the sidelines, I hope these articles are resources as you work hard to better learn this topic so you can work smarter when the need arises.
