A vacuum furnace was recently shipped to a firearms manufacturer based in the Midwest United States. The heat treat furnace will primarily be used to anneal firearm components.
Solar Manufacturing, based in Sellersville, PA, shipped a Model HFL-5748-2IQ furnace that has a graphite insulated hot zone of 36” x 36” x 48” with a weight capacity of 5,000 lbs., and maximum operating temperature of 2400°F.
“This was the first vacuum furnace our customer had purchased for their in-house heat treating,” commented Adam Jones, sales manager for the Midwest region at Solar Manufacturing. The company assisted with the furnace installation.
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Peter Zawistowski Managing Director SECO/VACUUM Technologies, USA Source: SECO/WARWICK
A global developer of power generation systems is planning to expand heat treat capabilities with a 2-bar vacuum furnace.
SECO/VACUUMwas awarded this contract and will provide a Vector® single chamber high-pressure quench vacuum furnace to expand the company's processing capacity, including high vacuum sintering and annealing. The new furnace will provide deep vacuum levels needed for the global developer's highly specialized applications.
"Securing continued business with this [client] is about working with people as much as it is working with machines," commented, Peter Zawistowski, managing director of SECO/VACUUM. This order is for a nearly identical furnace to one the same heat treat client ordered last year, which "really validated not just our furnace quality but also the teamwork and customer service behind it."
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Marcio Boragini Sales Director for Brazil at UPC-Marathon Source: LinkedIn
A gas generator was recently installed for Jomarca, one of the biggest manufacturers of fasteners, bolts, nuts, and fixing elements in Brazil. The generator will supply exothermic gas to a continuous wire annealing furnace, which is part of the manufacturer’s efforts to meet market demand efficiently and sustainably for baling wire in the construction industry.
Using exothermic gas instead of nitrogen, the company expects to reduce operating costs, increase production efficiency, and improve the wear properties and finish of its wire products.
“By providing them with our latest generator technology," commented Marcio Boragini, sales director for Brazil at UPC-Marathon, "we have helped Jomarca improve process efficiency, achieve sustainability, and exceed their customers’ expectations for high-quality wire products.”
Jomarca already owns two endothermic gas generators from UPC-Marathon, a Nitrexcompany with headquarters in North America. In March of this year, the company upgraded its wire operations with a 150 m3/h capacity ExoFlex generator to ensure consistent gas composition and prevent scale formation on the wire surface.
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North American Stainless (NAS), a stainless steel producer in the United States, will proceed with a $244 million expansion to its Ghent, Kentucky facility in Carroll County. This expansion adds 70 new jobs to the plant.
For its 13th expansion since 1990, NAS will build a new cold rolling mill, roll grinders, an extensive upgrade of its annealing and pickling lines to support the new rolling mill, a new temper mill and the expansion of the Melt Shop Building to include a 400-metric ton crane. The new expansion will grow NAS’ 4.4 million-square-foot facility in Carroll County. NAS offers a full range of stainless flat and long products. All of NAS’ production lines are located onsite at its 1,600-acre headquarters.
Andy Beshear Governor of Kentucky
"Our latest expansion will bring more clean, sustainable and American-made stainless to consumers and directly compete with the subsidized imports of stainless,” said Cristobal Fuentes, CEO at NAS. “Our parent company Acerinox was eager to further invest in Kentucky to demonstrate its commitment to our customers and the U.S. market.”
“I’m excited to announce more growth in Kentucky’s metals industry with this latest investment from North American Stainless,” said Andy Beshear, Governor of Kentucky.
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The Philadelphia Mint recently began a round of upgrades for its heat treat furnaces. Their function in the minting process is to anneal, clean, and dry the coin blanks to soften the metal prior to striking into coins, extending the service life of the striking dies.
SECO/WARWICK Group’s American subsidiary, located in Meadville, PA, recently began upgrades, a refurbishment of all five of the Philadelphia Mint’s heat-treating furnaces, one furnace per year. The heat-treating furnaces were originally installed there by SECO/WARWICK USA from 1994 through 2000.
All five furnaces are 4000 pound per hour rotary retort furnaces outfitted with a quench system, as well as a hopper feeder, a batch burnish barrel, and a batch/continuous drum drier. The furnaces are showing their age after a quartercentury, so rather than nickel and dime the maintenance, the mint opted for a comprehensive refurbishment.
“Our Partner has plenty of coin to heat-treat, but they don’t have any to burn," commented Marcus Lord, managing director at SECO/WARWICK USA. "These waste-heat recovery and combustion efficiency upgrades are going to save them a mint while cutting carbon and NOx emissions nearly in half."
The small letter at the nape of Washington’s neck in the coin image above is a mint mark. The “P” indicates that the coin was struck at the Philadelphia Mint. Source: SECO/WARWICK Group
To reduce energy consumption, the Mint is replacing insulation, roof panels, and radiant tubes as well as upgrading the loading systems. More energy efficient burners are being installed, along with recuperators to preheat the combustion air, to improve energy efficiency and use less natural gas. Mechanical improvements include replacing drive motors and two-speed gear boxes. The retort can over-heat and warp if the rotary retort unexpectedly stops before the cool-down cycle. As a failsafe, SECO/WARWICK added a pneumatic backup motor that can run the gear box off the Mint’s compressed air reservoir during a power outage.
The mint was established by the Coinage Act of 1792, when Philadelphia was the nation’s capital. It was the first public building constructed under the direction of the recently formed United States government. The machinery was powered by a horse walking circles in the basement.
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Bill St. Thomas Business Development Manager Lindberg/MPH Source: Lindberg/MPH.com
A manufacturer is expanding their heat treat capacities with a new box furnace, designed for air atmosphere applications, from a North American furnace provider.
Lindberg/MPH's heat treat furnace has a maximum temperature rating of 1,250°F and a load capacity of 6,000 lbs and is designed to accept fixtures that are 48" wide by 84" deep by 48" high. A full-width roller hearth is located across the furnace chamber floor for manual loading and load support. Temperature is controlled by a Honeywell DC2500 Series controller with an adjustable alarm set-point and latching output relay; the controller disconnects the power to the heating elements and sounds an audible alarm in an event that temperature exceeds desired set-point.
“The high velocity forced heating system circulates heat evenly within the furnace chamber," commented Bill St. Thomas, business development manager at Lindberg/MPH. "[This] assures rapid and uniform heat transfer throughout the workload.”
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Mr. Sivaraman Arjunan Senior Manager Sundram Fasteners Limited Source: LinkedIn
Indian fastener manufacturer Sundram Fasteners Limited will receive a vacuum furnace to heat treat high quality aviation screws.
This will be the second furnace from SECO/WARWICK --- a global heat treat solution provider --- for this manufacturer. The vacuum furnace on order is a compact Vector device that meets the Indian partner’s requirements in the field of fastener heat treatment for use in the aviation industry, particularly for heat treating large loads of manufactured aviation bolts.
“[The] Vector," commented Mr. Sivaraman Arjunan, senior manager at Sundram Fasteners Limited, "will improve and increase the processing capacity of the tempering, hardening and annealing processes, and will improve the process economics, considering energy savings and the graphite chamber efficiency.”
Sundram Fasteners Limited is a world leader in manufacturing precision components for the automotive, energy (windmills) and aviation sectors.
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Piotr Skarbiński Vice President of the Aluminum Process and CAB Products Segment SECO/WARWICK Group Source: SECO/WARWICK
A roller-type furnace intended for spheroidizing annealing of bearing steel forgings will be operated in the Kielce plant of global bearing manufacturer NSK. The process line built around a roller-type furnace is intended for heat treatment of workpieces will be assembled into bearings to be used, for example, in the automotive sector.
The company received the same SECO/WARWICK furnace years ago, and the line featuring it has been operating in the NSK factory for seven years now. This type of equipment has technological roots in the U.S.
"We know that bearing production requires a huge amount of precision," said Piotr Skarbiński, VP in charge of this product segment at SECO/WARWICK Group. "The required metallographic structure can be achieved in the production process only with a strict and repeatable regime of a many-hour thermal process. That is why our production line intended for this purpose is based on full automation of processes. This enables the elimination of all errors resulting from the human factor."
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Peter Zawistowski Managing Director SECO/VACUUM TECHNOLOGIES, USA Source: secowarwick.com
A global automotive components manufacturer is expecting a high pressure quench horizontal vacuum furnace from a North American-based vacuum furnace supplier for annealing fuel injector components.
With a chamber size of 36" x 36" x 48" and a load capacity of 3,300 lbs., the SECO/VACUUM Vector® vacuum furnace will be the seventh vacuum heat treating system delivered to the automotive OEM. The furnace includes a battery-operated electric loader and SECO/VACUUM's SCADA system. "Once again," Peter Zawistowski, managing director of SECO/VACUUM, says, "we have been rewarded for a good track record of performance and service support by this international automotive and machine tools components manufacturer."
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A 28” wide, 4 zone mesh belt annealing and brazing furnace has been commissioned for Bluewater Thermal Solutions, a U.S. based commercial heat treater.
The furnace from Gasbarre Thermal Processing Systemsis installed in Bluewater’s annealing and brazing facility in Coldwater, MI. The mesh belt furnace is designed with a maximum operating temperature of 2100℉ with a capacity of 1,600 lbs/hr, and utilizes a blend of nitrogen and hydrogen atmospheres. The system incorporates an Allen-Bradley PLC and integrated dewpoint meter to ensure precise process control for consistent and reliable part quality. This is the fifth such Gasbarre furnace at this location.
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