An overview of refractory ceramic fibers

This article will review refractory ceramic fibers (RCFs), which are amorphous, inorganic, man-made aluminosilicate fibers. RCFs belong to a class of materials termed man-made...

IHEA fall seminars return to Cleveland, Ohio

The Industrial Heating Equipment Association (IHEA) heads back to Cleveland, Ohio, for its 2021 Fall Seminars and Tabletop Exhibition. The Combustion Seminar and the...

27th IFHTSE Congress, European conference on heat treatment in Austria

The 27th IFHTSE Congress will be in Salzburg, Austria, September 5-8, 2022, at the Wyndham Grand Salzburg Conference Center. The conference chairs are Eva...

Q&A with Daniel Reardon

What is Abbott Furnace's mission? Our mission is to be the market leader in the design, production, and service of continuous process industrial furnaces. And...

Improving temperature uniformity during tempering

The final step in any steel heat-treatment quenching process which produces a martensitic microstructure is tempering. Martensite is a metastable phase and is extremely...

Carbon: Essential element or too much of a good thing

52100: Simple, yet it embraces carbon’s two-way benefit to steel

The State of Process Controls

It is hard to find a market segment that has not benefited from technology advancements. Heat-treating process control is no different. While there are...

Stress modeling of the WAAM process

A thermal model was previously developed and executed to simulate the Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) process, using the Goldak Flux Distribution to model...

Variation in Hardenability

Many heat-treating processes cannot tolerate appreciable variations in steel hardenability. For an established in-control process, deviations in chemical composition and starting microstructure may result...

Q&A with Lauren Jones

Why is it important to invest in the future of heat-treating? Nearly every metal component undergoes some type of heat-treating application. Vacuum furnaces contribute to...

Q&A with Aziz Jamaluddin

What is Epcon? Epcon is a full-service organization, starting with front-end business development/marketing, sales and application engineering, through complete in-house engineering, design, and drafting —...

Is there a furnace problem?

That question is much easier to answer if you learn the indicators, alarms, switches

Heat treatment of aluminum, part II: Water quenching

In the last article, we talked about the metallurgy behind quenching aluminum. Now we are going to discuss the available quenchants for aluminum. Introduction To achieve...

Poor Carbon Control

Carburizing has an advantage over other gear case hardening processes because it increases a gear’s ability to carry high torque. Carbon control is critical to...

Q&A with Joe Ugalde

Business Marketing Analyst with TE Wire & Cable, LLC

Learn from the best in 2020 and beyond

IRED Education in Atlanta: The Industrial Heating Equipment Association (IHEA) partners with the Chemical Coaters Association International (CCAI), Products Finishing magazine, and Southern Company...

Kanthal APMT for nuclear-energy application

The major earthquake and tsunami that occurred in Japan in 2011 did serious damage to boiling water reactors of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant....

Getting Control — Let’s Start with PID

It does not matter what thermal treatment work piece requires, proper control is the foundation for repeatability and quality processing. For heat-treating processes, there...

Q&A with Niall Sweeney

In which particular product area has Super Systems observed an increase in demand over the past couple of years? One particular area we have experienced...

A Short Guide on Water Vapor

Water vapor (e.g., excessive retained humidity) is the most commonplace enemy of vacuum furnaces. In fact, it is the No. 1 threat to everyday...

Mark your calendars for these important conference dates

5th International Conference on Heat Treatment and Surface Engineering of Tools and Dies (HTSE-TD) Hangzhou, China  |  April 24-27, 2023 This conference, sponsored by the Chinese...

Q&A with Robert Antolik

What’s a typical day like for you at Applied Test Systems (ATS)? Things have changed quite a bit lately due to COVID-19. But, in general,...

Developing a ‘C’reative culture in heat treat process

Hitchiner Manufacturing’s motto is, “imagination in metallurgy.” As a heat treater, there are certainly opportunities to use a bit of creativity in creating a...

Blistering of aluminum during heat treatment

In this column, we will discuss the blistering of aluminum during heat treatment, and methods to prevent its occurrence. Introduction High-temperature oxidation, or blistering, often occurs...

Thermal Process Modeling

Thermal process modeling has been a hot topic in the heat treating community over the past few years. The project conducted by ASM International...

Process comparison to improve fatigue performance

Bending fatigue and contact fatigue performance can be improved by the presence of residual compressive surface stresses . Many processes can induce these compressive...

Intensive Quenching

Heat treating is similar to art in many ways, but not for the reasons you might think. Art, it’s said, is in the eye...

Q&A with Greg Jennings

What’s a typical day like for you at Wisconsin Oven? My typical day is quite a bit of fun. I’ve got three kids, and it’s...

Q&A with Dennis Beauchesne

When was vacuum carburizing introduced? The process has been around since the 1960s. Vacuum carburizing enables more precise control of case depth and microstructure than...

Heating with natural gas

It’s no secret that the heat treating industry is one of the major recipients of the impact when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)...

Q&A with Max Dubin

What’s a typical day like for you at Across International? As sales development, I act as the intersection between the products our engineers design, our...

The art of heat treat: The framework

I was once taught that heat treat is an art as much as it is a science in achieving the results required for the...

Some things old can be new again

Why heat-treating furnaces look the way they do

True Carbon Potential

The relationship between a carbon-rich atmosphere and its effects on low-carbon steel are well known. The evolution of carburizing led to in-situ monitoring of...

Let’s hear it for welding

Heat-treating and metallurgy are topics that attract the overwhelming interest of attendees of technical conferences and are written about in numerous articles. However, a...

Determining Austenite Grain Size

Grain size is a critical metallurgical characteristic, significantly influencing design parameters such as strength and toughness. Austenite grain size (often referenced to as prior-austenite...

Handling temperature variations

Four essential maintenance steps for preserving temperature uniformity in your atmosphere furnace

Microstructural effect of Alloy 718 on fatigue strength

Gas turbine engines are widely used in aviation, power generation, and oil and gas industries. They are used in land, air, and marine. The...

IHEA member profile: Gasbarre Thermal Processing Systems

Gasbarre, headquartered in DuBois, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1973 to design, manufacture, and service a complete line of powder compaction and sizing presses for...

Heat treating from the operator’s perspective

Often, a customer visit involves a walk through the facility. Comments are made about how clean it is or how well organized a process...