Furnace Maintenance
When a heat treat manager or anyone responsible for purchasing heat treating equipment makes a buy decision, they must first consider the process required,...
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 Rick Diekman
Owner and President of Controlled Thermal Processing, Inc.
Finding leaks in an atmosphere furnace
Visual inspection, routine preventative maintenance of atmosphere furnaces is critical to maintaining safety, efficiency
Coupling Alloy and Process Selection
Combining both alloying and processing into a single strategy to achieve a desired level of performance sounds like a simple concept, but can be...
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...
Q&A with Steve Mueller
What does Praxair do for the heat-treat industry?
Praxair produces and sells industrial gases, such as nitrogen, argon, hydrogen, and helium. Our main focus for...
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 Bob Wells
What are some factors one should consider in cryogenic processing of gears?
First off, what is the size I need? Secondly, how do I want...
Heat Treating, Furnaces, and Unintended Consequences
A few decades ago, my involvement with depleted uranium (DU) began in the metallurgical R&D department, developing program logic to heat treat DU in...
Site Safety
In the last issue of Thermal Processing, I wrote a pretty broad and general article about the do's and dont’s of safety, using some...
Understanding the technology is key to proper use
I teach pyrometry courses throughout the year and, when I do, I include a thermocouple tutorial video from YouTube. In this video the function...
MP Combustion: Supply and support of the best combustion equipment
MP Combustion, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, is IHEA’s newest member company. MP is a regional leader in the supply and support of industrial combustion...
The big gamble: Electric vehicles or bust
There’s a big gamble going on in Detroit, and I don’t mean at Greektown Casino; it’s at the big three automakers. All have, in...
Some things old can be new again
Why heat-treating furnaces look the way they do
Industrial Process Heating online education is affordable, convenient, and flexible
IHEA’s Fundamentals of Industrial Process Heating Online Learning Course continues to provide an excellent overview of the essential areas used throughout the industrial process...
2019 annual meeting marks its 90th year
The Industrial Heating Equipment Association will celebrate its 90th anniversary at the 2019 Annual Meeting, April 29-May 1 at Lido Beach Resort in Sarasota,...
Quality Counts: Producing Endothermic Gas Efficiently
One of the critical elements in the carburizing process is the ability to create a base atmosphere suitable for the parts placed inside a...
Carburizing today: The secrets to predicting success
Predicting the outcome for today’s various carburizing processes requires different procedures and processes.
Carburizing today is performed by two primary processes, at or above atmospheric...
Q&A with Michael Hager
What’s a typical day like for you at Verder Scientific/Carbolite Gero?
Our office here in North America is primarily focused on sales, technical support, and...
Modeling can improve press quenching process
A combination of carburization and quench hardening is often used to increase the strength and improve fatigue performance of steel parts. During quenching, stresses...
Carburizing and Steel
In carburizing, gears must be heated to reach the appropriate temperature for the steel grade without causing excessive grain growth and distortion in a...
Combatting undesirable NMTP formations
Whether formed during a conventional quench and tempering process, carburizing, or induction hardening, non-martensitic transformation products (NMTP) are widely considered undesirable microstructural features. However,...
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...
Q&A with Shlok Sundaresh
What is your role at TS USA?
I joined TS USA, HEF Group, in 2014 as a process engineer for its Springfield, Ohio, facility. As...
The Right Prepared Atmosphere
Furnace atmospheres are critical to meeting metallurgical specifications defined by control processes. The makeup of a furnace’s atmosphere in the heat-treating process varies based...
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...
Keep wet pumps performing
Performing routine maintenance on a wet pump is critical not only to its life span but, more importantly, to its performance. One commonly recommended...
AMS2750E as it applies to Nadcap
Thorough knowledge of AMS2750E will speed implementation of new standard as it applies to NADCAP requirements
Evaluating a material’s response during austenitization
Carbon content in steel has a direct correlation to the hardness and overall strength of a component after heat treatment. Carbon can take many...
Q&A with Justin Sims
Who is Dante Solutions, and what do you do with the company?
Dante Solutions is an engineering company with a main focus on improving heat...
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...
Some workpieces are too large and expensive to fit into conventional benchtop hardness testers
Portable Rockwell Hardness Testing of Large Induction Hardened Work Pieces
The previous article identified many factors related to benchtop Rockwell hardness testing practices. This article...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Aluminum heat-treating has unique challenges
From a metallurgical and quality perspective, aluminum heat-treating presents unique challenges when compared to carbon-based steels. This article will examine the aspects of aluminum...
The metallurgical R&D laboratory
Remembering old-school lab work is a blast from the past
Future of heat treating of gears is similar to garage sale mentality
When and how does a heat treater determine whether to purchase new equipment or rebuild an old furnace?
Several years ago I participated in a...
