Q&A with Rick Diekman
Owner and President of Controlled Thermal Processing, Inc.
Distortion during heating
Minimizing distortion involves more than just optimizing cooling
Carbon: Essential element or too much of a good thing
52100: Simple, yet it embraces carbon’s two-way benefit to steel
Understanding gas composition
Evaluating furnace atmospheres for proper gas composition is the key to desired performance results
Q&A with David Strand
President and CEO, Wisconsin Oven Corporation and Thermal Product Solutions
AMS2750E as it applies to Nadcap
Thorough knowledge of AMS2750E will speed implementation of new standard as it applies to NADCAP requirements
Keeping your burners tuned
The backbone of any atmosphere furnace is the heating system. The heating system plays an essential role in keeping the furnace operating at peak...
Q&A with Don Selmi
What is Premier’s mission?
To provide heat-treating systems that are dependable as well as innovative, with performance-proven technology that will enhance the physical properties and...
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...
Find the right equipment
Vacuum carburizing or LPC, neutral hardening, oil or HPGQ (high pressure gas quench), vacuum pumps, graphite insulation, radiation shields or ceramic insulation, graphite or...
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...
Anatomy of a Heat-Treating System
Ninety-eight 600-pound trays are in continuous process, 13 are in the pre-process queue, nine preheating, 14 in the boost carb, eight in the diffusion...
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...
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...
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...
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 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 —...
Non-Martensitic Transformation Products (NMTP)
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,...
Meeting Automotive Efficiency Standards
For automobiles where competing hardening processes and materials are involved, automotive designers and heat treaters have choices when deciding how to meet efficiency standards.
There...
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...
Performing a Temperature Uniformity Survey
Performing a temperature uniformity survey (TUS) can be somewhat of a daunting process. After all, a TUS carries the weight of not only being...
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...
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...
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...
Vacuum Furnace Leaks
The process of finding leaks in your vacuum heat-treating system can sometimes be a lengthy process. However, a deeper understanding of best practices for...
Q&A with Joe Stambaugh
Pease tell us a little about your background and company.
My education was in electromechanical technologies. I have spent my 40-year career working in the...
Carburizing Optimization & ECD Precise Control
As discussed in the September/October 2016 Metal Urgency column , carburizing is a nonsteady-state diffusion process and thus can be expressed by Fick’s second...
Furnace Types
Heat treating furnaces consist of several subassemblies: insulation (fiber and brick), heating systems (electric and gas), material handling, quenching, atmosphere system, process and control...
Pyrometry, Industry Standards, & Temperature Uniformity Surveys
In its simplest sense, pyrometry is the measurement of temperatures. Practically speaking, in the business of heat treatment, the term also refers to the...
Extending the Hot Zone’s Life Span
One most commonly recommended procedure for making your equipment perform more effectively is to run a cleanup cycle, which removes contaminants from within the...
Q&A with Bill St. Thomas
Please tell us a little about your background.
I started in the heat treating industry back in the late 1960s working for one of my...
Q&A with Andrew Bassett
How did ATP get started?
During the early 1990s, the National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program (Nadcap) began embracing all special processes, and we...
Carbon Diffusion and Carburizing Parameter Selection
Although carburizing is a complicated process, it can be broken down into two main steps: carbon generation in the furnace and carbon diffusion into...
Furnace Doors
No matter the configuration, single or multi-chamber vacuum, batch integral quench, continuous, or even pits — an item that all furnaces have in common...
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 George Barbour
Please tell us a little about Heavy Carbon Co.
The company began in 1995 as an idea for carburizing steel at a cleaner, faster rate...
Carburizing
While some heat treatments are used to soften the material or improve its machinability, most are processed to obtain strengthened or hardened properties. The...
Stainless Steels
Kitchen sinks, refrigerator or oven doors, and tableware are what many people think of when they are asked what’s made from stainless steel (SS)....
Gas Nitriding
In general, nitriding of parts involves a thermal process that provides a tough, corrosion-resistant, and wear-resistant surface with less distortion compared to other case...
Q&A with Bill Stuehr
Please tell us how Induction Tooling began.
In 1975, I was working as a process design engineer with a local commercial heat treating company. Several...
