Case Study: Conrad Kacsik and Modern Industries

Modern Industries, one of the largest heat-treating facilities in Pennsylvania, has seen its share of equipment come and go since its beginning 71 years...

Gas vs. Liquid Quenching: A Direct Comparison in Hardenability to Reduce Distortion

Introduction Hardenability is the ability of steel to partially or completely transform from austenite to some fraction of martensite at a given depth below the...

Potential of nitrogen atomized alloy 625 in the powder bed fusion laser beam process

Powder-based metal additive manufacturing processes like powder bed fusion — laser beam use gas-atomized metal powders as feedstock material. Typically, for nickel-based alloys such...

Noise in instrumentation circuits

How to control and understand “noise,” as well as installation considerations.

Combustion optimization in gas burners of reverberatory Furnaces during nickel-alloy melting

In recent years, due to climate change, environmental sustainability programs have been created that require the search for alternatives to reduce air emissions and...

Reliable Vacuum Supply for Plasma Nitriding

Plasma nitriding is becoming more and more important for heat treatment.

Microstructure and tensile properties of Al PM prepared by novel low-pressure sintering

This article proposes a novel low-pressure sintering process contraposing to characteristics of pre-alloyed aluminum powders and analyzes its feasibility. The low pressure was set...

Effects of the Composition of Ca-Rich Inclusions on Tool Wear Mechanisms During the Hard-Turning...

This study describes the influence of the steel characteristics of Ca-treated carburizing steel grades during hard part turning of synchronizing rings in gearbox production....

Inductive Spin Hardening of Gears: A Survey of Key Features and Benefits

A large part of the misunderstanding of induction hardening seems to stem from an incomplete grasp of the basic induction heating process. This is...

Gas carburization techniques

A comparison of conventional and accelerated methods for surface hardening

Hardening of Powder Metallurgy Parts 101

Powder metallurgy (PM) is unique in that one has the ability to create a process system (alloy, process steps, and secondary operations) specific to...

New Cooling Tower Technology Augments HVAC and Industrial Processes

Recent developments in factory-assembled cooling-tower technology are increasing the applications for so-called “package” towers supporting HVAC and industrial processes. Although field-erected towers have been...

The tribology of dental ceramics

Ceramics are widely used in dentistry due to their ability to mimic the optical characteristics of enamel and dentine, as well as their biocompatibility...

An interpretable machine learning based approach for process to areal surface metrology informatics

Surface metrology parameters represent an important class of design variables, which can be controlled because they represent the DNA or fingerprint of the whole...

Increased Productivity Combining C/C Fixturing and LPC

Carbon/carbon and graphite materials are used in a variety of applications throughout the high temperature furnace industry. Entire vacuum hot zones are manufactured from...

Heat Treat 101: A Primer

Gears play an essential role in the performance of many products that we rely on in our everyday lives. When we think about gears,...

The Future of Kiln Lining

Lining iron and steel furnaces is critical to extend the life of the furnaces and to protect the purity of the metals being heat...

Commercial sintering of chromium powder metallurgy (PM) steels

Chromium was introduced as a potential alloying element for powder metallurgy (PM) steels in the 1990s. Since then, numerous chromium-containing alloy systems have been...

Tighter Control Through Understanding What Your TUS Reports Are Telling You

Temperature uniformity is the temperature variation (usually expressed as ± degrees) within the qualified furnace work zone (Figure 1) with respect to a set...

Filament-Wound Composites Have Specialized Curing Requirements

Filament winding is a manufacturing method for making tubular and cylindrical shapes of extreme strength and light weight. The technology involves wrapping a mandrel...

Understanding the Cooling Curve Test

When a hot component comes in contact with the liquid quenchant, there are normally three stages of quenching. There are exceptions to this, which...

Plasma nitriding as a low-nitriding potential process

Plasma/ion nitriding is a process that can be easily applied to various high-alloy steels. Some of these steels — for example M-2, S-7, D-2,...

Customized, modern process control system saves time, money

When a manufacturer of fasteners and fastening system components needed a more reliable process control system, it turned to Conrad Kacsik for an upgrade that would work with its older hardware.

Investigating a new cooling technology for electric vehicles

The electric vehicle (EV) revolution is well underway: It’s estimated the number of EVs populating U.S. roads alone will double by 2024. And though...

Case study: Determining the cause of cracking using computer modeling

During an induction-hardening process, the part surface is heated using a medium- to high-frequency inductor. Once the desired depth of austenitization is reached, the...

The next level of hot isostatic pressing

Over recent years, the development of in-HIP heat treatment (High Pressure Heat Treatment) has led to some interesting developments, which are now changing the...

Stress Generation in an Axle Shaft during Induction Hardening

Introduction Induction hardening of steel components offers a fast heating rate, high efficiency, and the ability to heat locally. Induction hardening is a highly nonlinear...

Ensuring Effective Furnace Lining Efficiency

Refractory engineers remain under constant pressure to increase the performance of furnaces, incinerators, and reactors to maximize energy efficiency. Although there are many materials...

Vacuum heat treatment for additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing means any technology capable of obtaining a final component starting from a 3D CAD file and adding material layer by layer. At...

Austempering: An Old Process with New Potential for Gears

The Austemper heat treat process was first developed in the 1930’s. Its application was initially limited to low volume, relatively small steel components. This has...

Filler metal control in sinter brazing

The control of the filler metal at the braze joint of a sinter brazed product has significant impact on the quality and yield of complex shapes.

Reimagining the steel production process

Steel has a major impact on everyone’s lives and our economy. It is crucial to cars, trucks, airplanes, buildings, and more. However, there is...

Innovation for saving energy and improving output

The harsh economic climate of 2020 had a direct impact upon ferrous and non-ferrous metal producers, as well as those companies involved in the...

Laser sintering of thermoset polyimide composites

Selective laser sintering (SLS) is an additive manufacturing technique that builds 3D models layer-by-layer using a laser to selectively melt cross sections in powdered...

Principles of pyrometry

Regarding comprehension, on a scale of 1 to 10, AMS2750E is about a 12. Practically speaking, when an engineer, quality person, or operator picks...

Heat treatment of steel measurement of hardness and tensile strength

The heat treatment of steel changes its microstructure, its hardness, and its tensile strength. These issues are of utmost importance as they are closely...

Single-piece flow case hardening can be worked into in-line manufacturing

Case hardening by carburizing is the most common heat treatment in mass production, which relies on atmosphere or vacuum carburizing followed by oil or...

Case Study: Busch LLC and Vakuum-Harterei Petter GmbH

Vakuum-Härterei Petter GmbH (VHP) based in Quickborn, Germany, is a contract hardening facility that specializes in high-quality heat treatment under vacuum. The company has...

Selecting the correct industrial ovens for finishing applications

Finishing is defined as “completing the manufacture or decoration of a material or product by giving it an attractive surface appearance.” In industrial applications,...

Advantages of wire-arc additive manufacturing

The concept of additive manufacturing has been around for a century, but with the advent of sophisticated software and robotics, the process is fast...