It might be easy to assume furnaces and ovens used to heat treat parts across industries might be fairly uniform in construction. But individual jobs for countless differently sized units often means a “one-size-fits-all” approach is not only inefficient, but sometimes not even possible.
The solution is often a furnace that’s custom designed to meet a company’s specific needs. Epcon has been helping its customers with this unique service for almost 50 years.
“What sets us apart is that everything we do is very custom to the process, and we also try to incorporate different levels of thermal recycling,” said Tasha Jamaluddin, managing director at Epcon. “This means multiple secondary and tertiary heat recovery systems, and we also integrate air pollution control within that. A lot of times, our systems, for example, can be net-zero in the sense where we can turn the burners off, by harnessing and recycling the thermal energy within the process. That’s really what we specialize in: bringing much more efficiency to the process and utilizing the heat captured from the VOC incineration, etc. We really try to build a comprehensive system for someone’s facility and look at it holistically. That’s really what sets us apart in the industry.”
On-site manufacturing
Epcon is one of the few companies in the industry that has its own on-site manufacturing, according to Jamaluddin. Its 250,000-square-foot facility allows Epcon to maintain control over each project’s quality and schedule. All systems are custom manufactured and preassembled at the company’s facility, undergoing rigorous quality checks and testing prior to shipment, ensuring the system will exceed performance expectations upon delivery and installation. Epcon’s systems use multiple heat recovery methods and unique designs to maximize operating efficiencies while simultaneously destroying all process emissions and VOCs.
Those custom products include a lot of varied furnaces that are used in a myriad of industries around the world, according to Jamaluddin. That includes aging ovens, annealing furnaces, batch systems, composite ovens, control atmosphere brazing furnaces, drying ovens, forging furnaces, multistage heat recovery solutions, oven and oxidizer combination systems, direct fired thermal oxidizers, thermal catalytic oxidizers, and more, and that’s only scratching the surface of what Epcon can offer.
“There’s not a type of heat-treating furnace that we don’t manufacture,” she said.
And, no matter what the project, Jamaluddin said her team prides itself in being able to start each project from “square one.”
“There is no base at all that we start with,” she said. “We actually go to the drawing board, and our engineering team approaches it after a company comes to us, and we look at that as a starting point and ask how we can enhance that. We’ll hit the uniformity targets; we’ll hit the temperatures, etc., but then we look at how we can integrate other parts of their process and enhance their operations. We’ll take every project and look at it, not just from the customer’s perspective of solving a problem, but how we can enhance that.”
‘Uncommon solutions for uncommon problems’
Being able to custom deliver a specific product is at the core of what Epcon can offer, according to Jamaluddin.
“We really seek out challenges,” she said. “Our motto has been ‘finding uncommon solutions for uncommon problems.’ We have a lot of patents, and we really try to innovate and bring that to the customer. When a customer comes to us with a process and some demands, what we try to do is use creative solutions — whether it’s airflow or other places where we’ll place the burners, etc. Our engineers will really get creative in managing, not just the precision uniformity, but finding unique ways to either increase the processing speed time or reduce fuel. We really try to exceed the customer’s expectations and give them a bonus output where we’ve not only solved your problem, but we’ve increased your output or decreased your processing time. That’s really what we strive for.”
With companies becoming more aware of dealing with carbon emissions, Epcon has worked to offer solutions and alternatives to meet the customers’ environmental concerns as well, according to Jamaluddin.
“Keeping companies in line with air pollution control and the regulations continues to be a huge thing, as is fuel consumption,” she said. “Becoming more efficient while hitting regulatory standards for pollution is what’s kept us standing apart, because we’re not just selling off the box or a furnace that’s treating one part of the process. We’re able to help an entire manufacturing process — whether it’s in an automotive facility or somewhere else — remain in compliance for decades to come. That’s one of the main things that we are able to do.”
Alternate solutions
Part of that evolution means that Epcon is offering electric-powered solutions along with its more traditional gas-powered options, according to Jamaluddin.
“Customization is the key for us,” she said. “It also depends on what’s best for where the customer is. We do international work as well, but we also do quite a bit domestically. We see a push for increasing domestic manufacturing, whether it’s automotive, manufacturing, or increasing aerospace here within the United States. We want to ramp up those productions and keep systems that last for several decades to come.”
Epcon’s outside-the-box thinking became a crucial aspect for a recent job done for an automotive company. Epcon designed and manufactured a multi-tiered system using Airflow to have a processing chamber double as a cool-off chamber, according to Jamaluddin.
“We were able to utilize the space and the footprint in a special way, as well as meet those necessary targets,” she said. “We were also able to increase the heat-treatment time by 100 percent. That was one of our key takeaways from that industry: to be able to solve one problem in a unique way by doing something really out of the box while meeting stringent demands within a retrofit space.”
Company beginnings
The roots of Epcon began in 1977 in Monterrey, Mexico, where Jamaluddin’s father, Aziz, was building a 55-gallon drum production line for a Houston-based company. After the Mexico facility closed, the owner brought Aziz to Houston as a project manager to complete the project and ultimately to start his own company, according to Jamaluddin.
“That was his founding project and what brought him to Houston as an engineer, and that’s what transferred him from being a project manager engineer to a company owner,” she said. “Since then, he’s been specializing in manufacturing and industrial equipment.”
Customer relationships
A big part of what has made Epcon successful through the decades is the company’s relationships with its customers, according to Jamaluddin.
“I think one of our biggest achievements is working with repeat customers and making them happy, quite honestly,” she said. “We’ve had some really successful projects with large aerospace companies. One of the applications we did quite a while ago was we worked on the heat treatment for parts that went into the space shuttle for NASA. There have been a lot of really great crowning projects, but I think for us, we take pride in the loyalty in our repeat business with our customers, because we know they’re coming back to us after 30 or 40-plus years. It’s exciting to know our equipment’s still working, and we’re still doing business with the same customers.”
As Epcon continues to work with its customers, Jamaluddin sees automation and AI to be challenges the company will need to address as the industry moves into the future, whether that involves the manufacturing floor, IoT technology, or something else.
“Providing a base system with sophisticated controls that is adaptable is what’s coming next,” she said. “The base furnace or actual machinery is one thing, but then you’ll need the flexible interface and controls. We can’t predict what’s going to be going on in 20 years, but I know our furnaces will be operating in 20 years, so that electrical automation front end will need to be easily workable, whether it’s sophisticated HMI controls that a user interfaces, we will work to ensure it can be changed out and enhanced over time while the system keeps operating.”
But the human factor will still be needed, Jamaluddin said, and it will be Epcon’s mission to make sure the machinery and the workers merge seamlessly for the most efficient results.
“There is a place where you’re going to need a lot of human oversight in a lot of these facilities,” she said. “There is some level of automation that you’re already seeing, but as far as oversight on the systems, you’re still going to need a lot of boots on the ground at these facilities overseeing these systems. Even if they’re behind a computer screen monitoring a facility from behind glass, so to speak, you’re still going to have workers in these facilities.”
MORE INFO pconlp.com
