HEAT TREAT RADIO

Heat Treat Radio #59: HIP & High Pressure Heat Treat with Johan Hjärne, Quintus Technologies

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Heat Treat Radio host Doug Glenn sits down to talk with Johan Hjärne about high pressure heat treating and an e-book recently published by Heat Treat Today in cooperation with Quintus Technologies. Learn more about high pressure heat treating in this informative interview.

Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited transcript.

 

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Doug  Glenn (DG): For this edition of Heat Treat Radio, I have the great pleasure of sitting down with Johan Hjärne (JH) from Quintus Technologies.  Let's give the listeners a sense of who you are, how long you've been in the industry and your experience with HIPing.  If you don't mind, please introduce yourself.

JH:  Absolutely, thank you so much, Doug, for that introduction.  My name is Johan Hjärne and I work for Quintus Technologies.  I've been with the company for around 10 years now. I started up where we have our head office, which is in Västerås, Sweden, 10 years ago as an R&D manager there. Later, I had other roles like product manager for our hot isostatic presses.  I also worked as a global business development manager, responsible for the strategies for a couple of years, and since four years ago, I'm now the business unit director for Quintus Technologies here in the American region.   I am responsible for our hot and cold isostatic presses and also our other business unit which is called Sheet Metal Forming Presses.  Before I joined Quintus, I worked within the aerospace industry for 10 years.

DG:  I've been to your office, but I want everyone else to know:  You guys are located just north of Columbus, Ohio.

To learn more about HIPing, download this free ebook.

JH:  That's absolutely correct.  It is a little suburb of Columbus called Lewis Center just north of Columbus.

DG:  The reason we decided to get together on this podcast was because you and I and our respective teams have just successfully completed the publication of an eBook, which basically we've entitled “High Pressure Heat Treatment.”  It deals with HIPing and some other things.  So, that's the occasion for this meeting.  I want to ask you to discuss, briefly, with us about high pressure heat treating.  What is it and why did we decide to do this eBook on it?

JH:  A very good question.  As I indicated before, I have a background in the aerospace industry and when I worked there we were responsible for some components in a jet engine.  We had big castings and we typically 'HIPed and shipped' these castings.  HIPing, to at least us in the aerospace where I worked at the time, was like a black box.  We really didn't know.  We knew that the results were better if we HIPed, we could use less material, the material got stronger, etc, etc.  So, when I started at Quintus, at the same time we had made some progress with increasing the cooling rate in our HIP system.

A HIP system basically works in a way where you apply a high temperature and high pressure and then you cool down, and during this process you take away the pores.  We had realized that the cooling part of this cycle could be shortened drastically with some updates of the equipment.  At the same time, additive manufacturing started to grow.  They started, after awhile, to understand and realize that even though the process of additive manufacturing is a brilliant process, (you can do fantastic things in a short period of time), many times they ended up with porosity in the parts.

The aerospace industry, the medical implant industry, and others required that these pores be taken away.  So, they reached out to us and wondered what we could do about this.  When we said that the HIP cycle is perfect, you can remove the porosity from your part, they started to ask questions like, “Why do I need to heat treat it afterwards?  Why do I need to do something else afterwards?  Isn't this enough without gas to remove the porosity?”   That is where we started to add one and one together to see, well, the cooling rates we can apply in our modern HIP system might actually be good enough to do this heat treat section.  So, for materials that were suitable for this, we started to elaborate, and that is how we started to work with this and development it more and more.

DG:  Let's talk about the difference, then, between traditionally HIPing and what this high pressure heat treatment is.  Process-wise, what is the difference?

JH:  Process-wise, as I explained a little bit briefly before, the HIP process is basically increasing the temperature in the furnace, or in the pressure vessel, and then we apply a high pressure.  After the material has been under these conditions, we need to cool the pressure vessel to be able to take out these parts.  The next step, in many cases, is a similar heat treat process, but without any pressure.  So, basically, after the HIP step, you take out the parts from the HIP and you redo almost the same cycle, without pressure, just to be able to cool it faster and get the correct material properties.  When we realized that this cooling step was high enough and that we can do it already in the HIP system, then we could basically remove that subsequent solutionizing step.  Basically, it is applying the same cooling rate, as they had in the solutionized step, directly in the HIP unit.  Combining these two is what we call high pressure heat treatment.

The systems we have are also capable of running pressure and temperature independently.  If we take an additive part which is being printed on a build plate, you can, in principle, take that build plate, put it in one of our HIP systems, you can run a stress relief cycle to begin with where you only use an elevated temperature without any pressure whatsoever, you can increase the pressure and the temperature when you want to go into the HIP cycle, you can quench it down to do the solutionizing step and you can even, if you find it reasonable, do an aging step.  This whole process could, in principle, remove four different steps.  It is always a question of do you want to take the whole build plate and do that, or do you want to remove the parts from the build plate before you HIP and heat treat it, and so on and so forth.  That is always up to the customers.  The machines we provide are capable of taking care of the whole process, of doing it all.

DG:  Doing it all- stress relief, HIP, age, or whatever. Just for clarity sake, you've got a typical HIP process, you're going to heat it up, put it under very high pressure, then, normally, if you didn't have the high pressure heat treatment capabilities, you would have to cool that part down which is typically cooled quite slowly in a conventional HIP unit, taking more time and whatnot.  It then comes down to ambient, or close to ambient, where it can be held, you take it out, you put it back in another furnace (a normal furnace, not a HIP furnace), take the temperature back up, get it to the point where you want it, quick cool it, quench it, to a certain extent, to get the characteristics that you're looking for, and you're done.  What we're talking about here is the combination of those two processes plus potential other things like stress relief, and all that, in a single unit, correct?

JH:  Yes.  This has very beneficial effects on time.  Many of the HIP vendors do not have HIP and heat treatment in the same facility.  Now we have sold a couple of units to some new HIP vendors that have this capacity, but, historically, the HIP vendors didn't have both HIP and heat treatment.  First, the customer had to send it to a service provider for HIPing, they got the part back, they had to send it to somebody that could do the heat treat step, and then got the part back, and so on.  The time, and specifically for additive manufacturing, is important.  Keep in mind they can do a part pretty fast, anywhere between a day to two days, worst case a week, but then having to wait week after week after week to get the part back for the HIPing or for the heat treating.

DG:  So there's a substantial, potential time savings, for sure; not just process savings in between furnaces, but the fact that you can buy one furnace and do both of those things.

Let's talk for just a second about what types of products are most effectively HIPed and/or, if we can, high pressure heat treated.

JH:  As I said before, we really started to realize the potential with this technology with the additive manufacturing world.  That is were we started to realized that we can actually make a difference here.  Not only does it have a beneficial effect for the total time, but having the components under elevated temperature for a shorter period of time is actually beneficial for the microstructure; the grain doesn't grow as much.  You can take the example, again, with the first HIP cycle with having that at a certain temperature, you cool it down slowly then you heat it up again to the same high temperature for a period of time before you quench it down.  Well, then you exaggerate the component for high temperature under a much longer period.  If you can do that in just one step, the component doesn't have to be in as high a temperature for such a long period of time which means that the grains don't grow as much which gives you a better microstructure and better material properties.  That is one effect.

Another effect that we have realized is very beneficial is that when you're dealing with additive manufacturing, you end up, specifically if it's laser powder bed fusion, you end up with Argon in the pores and  Argon cannot be dissolved into the material.  With a HIPing process, the Argon pores are basically eliminated, in a way.  However, if you heat it up again, these pores start to grow and they can grow back again and be bigger.  So, if you remove that heat treat step afterwards, you don't have to be afraid of this pore growth again.  That's another beneficial effect, from a metallurgical standpoint, that we have realized.

Additive manufacturing is very well suited for this.  With that said, now we see a more increasing interest from the casting side, as well.  With these new modern HIP units we have, we can cool with velocities of several thousand  degrees per minute, a little dependent on what size, etc., but this has a very good effect on the microstructures on suitable materials like nickel-base super alloys and titanium aluminides, etc.  The casting side is now starting to get very, very interested in this technology, as well, because basically it didn't exist before.  We see a huge potential and we have seen an immense growth of requests for this technology the last couple of years.

DG:  How about just straight powder metal?  I know you're talking 3-D, but how about just straight powder metal manufacturing, because those parts tend to be a bit more porous than your normal wrought products, and things of that sort?

JH:  If you talk about powder metallurgy and HIP, you typically need to have everything canned, in a way.  Powder metallurgy, we call it near-net shape, for example, where you weld structures to a certain shape or form, you fill that with powder and then you HIP it and out comes a part which basically has a perfect microstructure.  We haven't come so far yet to start to evaluate how that will be with this high pressure heat treat, but what we have seen with the interest of this is that a lot of the HIP cycles were developed many, many years ago.  At the time, they didn't have the cooling capacity we have today and they ended up with cycles which were good, they took away the porosity.  However, with the capability to modify both the temperature and the pressure, you can come to the same fully dense part.  I'm over exaggerating  a little bit, but if you have a high temperature, you can have a lower pressure.  If you have a lower temperature, you can increase the pressure.  So, we have also focused on having a very high pressure on all of our equipment because then you have this flexibility to get to the fully dense part in the best way.  This is something I'm absolutely convinced that the powder metallurgy industry would be interested in and evaluating more, as well.

DG:  For the people who might be interested in testing a part, or something like that, are there size restraints?  Typically, what type of workzone are we talking about in a standard Quintus HIP unit?

JH:  If we talk about today, what we have on the market for relatively high cooling rates, if we're talking cooling rates in the 200-300 C/minute or 400-500, almost 600 F/minute, the production units are at 2 feet diameter, give or take (660 mm), and around 6 feet high.  But this is something that the next generation we are developing right now, we are approaching a meter and more than that, as well.   So, it's just a matter of time to grow this.  We've seen that there is the highest interest on the additive manufacturing market, which is why we have focused on that to begin with, now we're doing higher and I do not see any limitations in going up in diametrical size for this.

DG:  But it is exponentially more difficult as you get wider, yes?

JH:  Yes.  It's a good comment you make.  You have a much higher volume that you need to cool down.    But, for the cooling rates, we see, at least today, most applicable where we talk about these, as I said, 200-300 C/minute, we definitely see possibilities to go over a meter in diameter and then we have large production sized HIP units.  We do HIP units that are much bigger than that but if you start to get over 1 ½ meter and even bigger, then you're absolutely correct, then the cooling rates are drastically lower.

DG:  Could you describe, for those who may not have ever seen or understand a HIP unit, and most specifically, a high pressure heat treatment HIP unit, what does it look like?

JH:  I can start with a pressure vessel, basically.  It's basically a cylinder where you put a furnace in and in this cylinder you can increase the pressure and in the furnace you can increase the temperature so you create a pressure vessel with high pressure and high temperature.

DG:  And Johan, we're talking, typically, a vertical cylinder?

JH:  Correct.

DG:  And this high pressure vessel has a wall thickness of ….. ?

JH:  That is a good question, Doug.  Depending on size, of course, the wall thickness can be anywhere from a couple of inches to maybe the biggest wall thickness we have now is up to 200 millimeters, or something like that.  Don't hold me to these numbers.  But, the important thing is that you can do a pressure vessel design in two ways:  Either you can use a very thick-walled cylinder to contain the high pressure, or you can do a thin-walled pressure vessel, and that is where the big difference is.  At Quintus Technologies, we use a thin-walled pressure vessel and we apply a wire winding technology.  So we pre stress this cylinder with a wire, but we can also apply cooling next to or in direct contact with this pressure vessel.  What we do is create a heat exchanger with our whole system.  We also apply cooling in the lower closures and in the upper closures so what you have is a water controlled pressure vessel with a furnace in and then we can actively control how fast we would like to cool the unit with controlling the cooling of the pressure vessel.

DG:  I'm imaging, right away, thermal shock written all over this thing.  You've got a high pressure, a vessel that's at high temperature and all of a sudden you guys slam in there because you want to drop temperatures 300-400 C, 400-500 F/minute, I'm seeing a lot of thermal shock going on.  How do you deal with that?

JH:  The gas that we are working with is Argon.  Argon has an extremely good thermal conductivity.  At high temperature it, sort of, takes care of the densification process in a very good way because it takes the heat from the gas into the material.  What we then use is the colder gas in the lower region and we basically force that cold gas up into the furnace.  But we don't do that with any specific high velocity.  The velocities in  pressure vessels are pretty moderate and continuous.  And, of course, we have requirements on the pressure vessel wall.  The pressure vessel walls are strictly monitored and controlled so they can never exceed certain temperatures.  That's where we have our, sort of, safety function and control function.

We don't see any challenges with thermal shock.  The alternative of having a thick-walled cylinder might have bigger challenges when you cool from one side.  Then, you can end up with other challenges like thermal cracks, etc.  But using a thin-walled solution as we do, we don't see any issues with this.

DG:  The other major issue I would think you'd have with thick walls is you probably wouldn't be able to reach the cooling rates that you're talking about because you've got a huge heat sink sucking up all of that cold air.

A company that might be thinking about bringing this HIPing thing in-house and do high pressure heat treatment in-house, are they going to have to have any operational expertise?  In other words, do you need to hire a PhD from Harvard, or someone like that, to operate this unit?

JH:  No.  Operating a HIP unit like this is not, according to Quintus, more difficult than operating other heat treat furnaces in any way.  Of course you need a touch and feel for the unit, how it works, etc.  This is taken care of during training when we deliver the systems.  You don't have to have any PhD from Harvard to run and operate these units.

Doug, you've been in our Lewis Center office, and we have an application lab there.  If someone is interested, we are more than wiling to take on customers or somebody that just wants to know more about the technology and take a look at it.  They're more than welcome to contact me or Quintus and come and visit us.

The market is starting to get these machines out for operation.  If you are a customer that would like to try these out and have a part that is bigger than our small lab furnaces can do, there are service providers out there on the market that can do this.  We have companies like Accurate Grazing in Greenville, SC that have a couple of these units.  We have Paulo up in Cleveland, OH and on the west coast we have Stack Metallurgical in Portland, OR.  Even Canada has their first really fast unit now with Burloak and also Mexico has a company called HT-MX. For the bigger companies that decide to outsource, or any company that decides to outsource, this is a technology that is out there on the market.

DG:  Your lab there in Lewis Center will help process or 'part validate', I assume, if somebody is interested in that?  They can bring an idea, a problem or a part in development to you and you'll say, “Yes, here's what we can do and we can prove it by running it.”

JH:  Absolutely.  We have the thought that if somebody wants to evaluate this and are willing to work a little bit with us and maybe we can get some information back, we have this as a service for free.  We are not a service provider in the sense that we compete with our customers, but if someone wants to evaluate the technology and are willing to talk with us and listen to us, this is a service we do for free.

DG:  I'm going to ask you about giving out additional information where people can go to get more information, but I would like to let the listeners know that if you go to www.heattreattoday.com and in the search box just type in 'HIP' or 'HIPing' or 'hot isostatic pressing', you'll see a pretty healthy list of articles that appear there that aren't necessarily specific to high pressure heat treatment, just HIPing generally, but certainly there are articles there about high pressure heat treating, as well, from Quintus.  You can also type Quintus into the search box and you would come up with quite a few things because you guys have provided us with some good content.

That's one place you can go if you want to find out more information.  Johan, where can they go, what are you comfortable giving out as far as contact information for you and/or Quintus?

JH:  Regarding information, they can go to our homepage, of course, Quintustechnologies.com.   And don't forget the eBook, Doug.  That's a very good description of HIPing.  If you want to know more, download the eBook.  That has a good description of not only high pressure heat treatment, but also HIPing and a little bit of history of HIPing.

Otherwise, you can contact me by going to the Quintus homepage and find contact information for me.  We also have the application lab in Lewis Center.  If it has to do with HIPing, it will end up in my in-box, sooner or later.

DG:  You've got a good team there, by the way.  We know some of your other folks who you work with that are very good people.  If you're a listener and you're interested, you want to go to the Quintustechnologies.com homepage.  You can search for Johan Hjärne  on the Quintus homepage and you'll get Johan's contact information.

And yes, you make a very good point, don't forget the eBook on Heat Treat Today's site.  You can get there simply by typing into your browser- www.heattreattoday.com/ebook and you'll go to our eBook homepage which has two eBooks on there right now, the most recent being the one from Quintus.

JH:  I would also like to add something.  We talked an awful lot about the U.S., but if there are any listeners from the rest of the world, we have an application lab where we have our head office in  Västerås, Sweden, as well.  That lab is even a little bit better equipped that our lab is, so that's a fantastic opportunity if you're not situated here in North America.  We also have connections in China and Japan, but you can find more information about that on our homepage.

DG: Johan, thank you so much. Great to talk with you, thanks for your time.

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today
Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today

 

 

Heat Treat Radio #59: HIP & High Pressure Heat Treat with Johan Hjärne, Quintus Technologies Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #58: Indentation Plastometry with James Dean of Plastometrex

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Heat Treat Today publisher Doug Glenn and James Dean of Plastometrex discuss indentation plastometry, a new technique for obtaining important mechanical property values for a wide variety of materials. The company’s equipment is just barely 6-months old and is already finding its way into heat treat applications in North America.

Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited transcript.

 

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

DG:  Today, we're going a bit international.  We're going to have a conversation with Mr. James Dean from Plastometrex in the UK, which is obviously a far spell from Pittsburgh, where I'm located.  James, welcome to Heat Treat Radio.  We're looking forward to talking with you.

JD:  Thanks, Doug, it's nice to be here.

DG:  We want to talk about materials characterization, testing and things of that sort.  We'll get into, specifically, what part of that in just a bit.  But first, James, if you don't mind, briefly, let people know who you are, the qualifications you have to  be talking about the topic that we will be hitting on, and about your history in the heat treat industry or in the materials characterization industry.

JD:  Quick background:  I'm a materials scientist from the UK.  I first studied materials as a young undergraduate at Imperial College in London.  That was way back in the year 2000.  I subsequently went on to do a PhD in Cambridge, also in materials science.  It was during that period when I really first became interested in the mechanical behavior of materials, particularly strength characteristics and the relationship between those strength characteristics and underlying microstructural features.  In fact, one vivid memory that I have from an undergraduate laboratory class was measuring Vickers hardness numbers on age hardening aluminum copper alloys and monitoring the changes that occurred with different heat treatment times.  That all struck me as being quite powerful because it meant that we could tune mechanical properties.  Up until that point, I hadn't fully appreciated that that was possible.

What's a little more unfortunate is that I've also since learned that if we want to achieve a particular characteristic, high strength for example, we often have to do so at the expense of another, usually the ductility.  I guess that's why material scientists all over the world continue to look for new compositions, new alloy systems, even novel heat treatments that offer mechanical performance improvements that, perhaps, haven't yet been realized.  My involvement in this industry is driven simply by my interest in these things, which is why I feel extremely lucky to be leading a company like Plastometrex.

DG:  Tell us a bit about the company.  You're the CEO there.  As I mentioned earlier, you're located in Cambridge, UK.  Tell us about the company, its history and about the products and things of that sort.

JD:  Plastometrex is a company that develops novel mechanical testing systems that are powered by advanced software tools.  By advanced, what I really mean is state of the art modeling methods, things like finite-element analysis, optimization algorithms and also, forgive the buzz words but, machine learning tools, as well.  These are needed because our machines measure stress strain curves and metal strength parameters from quick and simple indentation tests.

There is some justification to say that people have been indenting materials for centuries and, of course, that is true.  But people have been doing this simply to measure hardness numbers, predominantly, at least.  We might argue that anybody that understands a little bit about hardness testing probably also understands that hardness numbers are not fundamental material properties.  They would understand that a material's hardness number actually changes if you change the shape of the indenter that you use or if you change the load that you apply.

Hardness numbers can only really be used in a semiquantitative way to rank materials.  They can't be used in a design calculation or in a finite-element analysis.  So, to use them as proxies for strength, which is often done, can, in fact, be potentially dangerous.  I would go on to say that, unfortunately, hardness numbers are often accorded a much higher significance than they really deserve.  My own view is that it is much better to have access to fundamental strength characteristics which is why we've been spending our time developing these new machines and their associated software packages.

So, to wrap up the question, the technique is called indentation plastometry and it was developed over a  10 – 12 year period of research, led mostly by Professor Bill Clyne and his research group in Cambridge.  On the back of that, we established Plastometrex in late 2018 to commercialize the technology.

DG:  You're saying the company, Plastometrex, was established in 2018.  So, you're about 3 years into this.  Are you fairly successful so far?  I mean, are you happy with the progress?

JD:  I would say that we're reasonably happy with our progress so far.  Of course, like a lot of companies, we're just coming out of this rather difficult period because of Covid.  What that means, for a company like ours, which I guess you could still class as a start-up, is that it's just much harder to sell equipment.

What we're finding right now is that lots of companies rationalized their organizations in various different ways.  One of the first things that companies seem to have done, which is quite understandable, is put restrictions on their CapEx spending.  That's something that we, like most companies, have to deal with at the moment.

But, notwithstanding that, I would say we still make good progress with monies to secure quite substantial amounts of investment.  One of our leading investors is Element Materials Technology.  They're one of the world's leading providers of testing inspection certification services.  We're still employing more people.  At this stage, we're launching new initiatives and we are selling machines, despite the current climate.  Our trajectory looks quite good right now.

DG:  Where are you selling, primarily?  Is it mostly Europe?

JD:  It's mostly Europe, at the moment.  We have sold one of our machines, actually, to Worcester Polytechnique Institute in North America.  We're actually having conversations right now, I won't disclose them, with other North American universities who have expressed an interest in technologies like ours.

DG:  Good.  It's good to see a young company doing well even in the midst of Covid, so congratulations on that.

Broadly speaking, your company is dealing with materials characterization testing.  The equipment you produce: what properties is it, in fact, intended to characterize?  You've already hit on this a little bit- stress, strain, etc.  Maybe briefly explain each of those properties for those who might not know what the difference of those things are.  A quick “materials 101.”

JD:  The very quick answer to your question, Doug, is that we are measuring plasticity characteristics or strength characteristics.  They're often best captured, or best represented, in the form of the stress strain curve.

Now, stress strain curve of material is really quite important since from it you can deduce important features like the stiffness of a material.  But then there are other features, such as those I've described that relate to the plasticity characteristics.  These are things, like the yield stress of the material, which is the stress at which the material starts to plastically deform or, i.e., permanently change its shape.

You can also view the hardening behavior as the material continues to strain, which is often quite important.  And, you can also extract from the stress strain curves things, like an ultimate tensile strength or a fracture strength, and these things can be used in things like design calculations.

From the stress strain curve you can also extract a ductility value, which is a nominal strength fracture for those people in the know.  But, as with hardness numbers, the ductility value is also not a fundamental material property and this is often not understood.  The ductility value actually changes depending on the test geometry that you use.  That's an important thing to understand because people often use the ductility in things like engineering critical assessments not fully understanding that that value can be different depending on the test that you did.

I think the important message here is indentation plastometry can be used to measure things like the yield stress, to measure the uniform elongation strength, to measure the ultimate tensile strength of the material.  But, our technique can also be used, if you want to, to calculate things like the Vickers and the Brinell hardness numbers, as well.  But, the limitations around hardness numbers that I've already outlined still apply.

DG:  Your product is basically offering a new way of doing some of these tests.  Basically, it almost looks like just a hardness test because you're doing the indentation, but you're getting a heck of a lot more out of it.  Maybe, again, just 101, how have these tests been done in the past and what is the method that you've been developing over the past 3 years?  How does that differ and what is the benefit?

JD:  The current gold standard for mechanical testing is the uniaxial tensile test.  To us, at least, that is another mechanical test that hasn't fundamentally changed for almost a century, actually.  In principal, it is a rather simple test where you take a test specimen in the form of a testing coupon and you stretch it (or strain it, to use the proper term), and you do that until it breaks.  If you monitor the forces in the displacements during the test, it's very easy to calculate the stresses and strains within the sample.  But, there are a number of problems with this type of testing machine.

The first is that you need to have access to quite a lot of the material that you want to test because the test specimens are usually quite large, often in the centimeter dimension range.  That also means that the material that you want to test needs to be machinable, and not all materials are; I'm referring mostly to metals here.  In fact, some are actually quite difficult to machine so that this process of machining test coupons can be quite a cumbersome one.  Often quite time consuming, too, especially if you need to outsource these procedures.

The test itself also requires access to a large, often very expensive, universal test machine, and, in addition, a suitably trained technician, as well.  There can be further problems with things like specimen gripping, alignment of the specimen, machine compliance, and other things like that.

Whereas, and of course I'm biased, a machine like the indentation plastometer, really combines the very best attributes of hardness testing, which is speed, ease and simplicity of testing, with the very best attributes of tensile testing, which is acquisition and access to forced stress strain curves.

I would add to that, as well, that with a machine like ours, you can test real components and you can map spacial variations in properties across surfaces, such as those, for example, that might exist across a weld.  Again, in summary, we think you get the best of both worlds with our machine and, in some cases, even things that are better than other machines.

DG:  You may have already stated this a little bit, but briefly: indentation plastometry is basically taking an indentation to be able to test, not just hardness or not even necessarily hardness, but the deformation or the strain of material.  Do you have to know the microstructure of the material when you're doing these tests?

JD:  That's a good question.  In principle, no.  If we were to dig deep into the mechanics of what's going on within our system and our software package, you'd come to recognize that it's, from a mathematical point of view at least, insensitive to microsctructural features.  There is a numerical method underlying this – a finite-element analysis – therefore, treating this as a continuum system doesn't take account explicitly of the microstructure.

When you're doing the test, it's actually helpful to know something about the microstructure simply because our technology is all about extracting bulk mechanical behavior engineering properties.  Therefore, when we do our indentation test, it is important that we are indenting a representative volume of the material.

It is important that we are capturing all of the microstructural features that give rise to the behavior you would measure in a microscopic stress strain test.  Otherwise, you can't pull out those bulk, core engineering properties, and therefore, the scale on which you do the indent is important.  Your indenter has to be large relative to the scale of the microstructure.  So, it's only at that level that you need to understand or know anything about the microstructure.

DG:  This test is a nondestructive test, right?  You said you can actually test live materials, correct?

JD:  Yes.

DG:  You don't have to destroy them, you don't have to machine them, you don't have to make them into something you can rip apart, right?

JD:  Right.

DG:  Is there a limitation on the size of the product that you can test?  Do you have to put this thing into a machine to clamp it down to do the indentation?

JD:  Yes.  There are some limitations.  I'll come back to those in a second.  I just want to address the first point.  It wasn't a question, but you actually referenced it, so I'm going to pick up on it, and it's about whether this test is nondestructive or not.

It's an interesting question.  I think, really, it's a matter of perspective, or sometimes, a matter of even industry.  We don't destroy test samples in the same way you do during a normal tensile test.  But, we do create small indents in the surface of the specimen.  Whether that can be regarded as destructive is really open to interpretation.  Our colleagues in the aerospace industry probably would be comfortable testing a turbine blade and then putting it back into service even if the indent is relatively small.  So, on that basis, they might consider the test to be a destructive one.  But, for many other applications, we, and others actually, would regard our test as a nondestructive one and, indeed, that is often how we pitch it.

Then, to the second question which is about limitations on size. . .

DG:  Yes, size, geometry, shape, or anything of that sort.

JD:  There are no restrictions on shape, per se.  It's important that the specimen has two parallel sides.  When you put in on the plinth, under which when you do the testing, when you come down normal to that surface with the indenter, you want them to be as flat as possible.  You can accommodate small inclines up to 2-3 degrees, but ideally they would be parallel.  So, that's one constraint.

In terms of total size, if you look at a bench top machine, (and anybody visiting our website would be able to see it), it's got sort of like a window, a cavity, where you can put your specimens into which has got a width of about 20 cm, height of about 7 cm and a depth which is also probably about 20 cm, as well.  That is what is governing/dictating the maximum size of sample you can put in there, at the moment.

In terms of the other direction, how small can you go, we advised people not to indent anything that has lateral dimensions less than about 5 x 5 mm and that is because if you start to indent close to edges, you can get edge effects and therefore in our software package, behind the scenes, the modeling assumptions that we impose start to break down.

In addition to that, in terms of the sample thickness, we typically impose a minimum height of about 2 mm.  Then again, that is because, in our underlying software package, the modeling assumptions assume that what you're indenting is essentially semi infinite in size and if you indent thin samples, that assumption breaks down too.  That's what is driving those constraints on sample size.

DG:  And, being able to run a test on a spherical object is not a problem as long as you can get it flat, I mean, like pipe tube and that type of stuff?

JD:  Pipes are interesting, actually.  One of the things we're working on right now as a company is an in-field testing kit, or portable detection plastometer.  Our immediate focus is on the pipeline materials.  In fact, you might know this, there is some new legislation in North America called the Gas Mega Rule which is now mandating that pipeline operators inspect their pipes, I think it's probably every one mile into this.  One of the tests that they need to do is a strength test.

There's a big opportunity out there, potentially, for the testing of pipe materials.  A technology like ours is something that could support and enable that.  But then, coming back to your question about indenting a surface that is curved, which is what this really relates to.  And that is simply, again, a matter of scale.  If it's got extremely high curvature and you come down with an indenter such that the curvature is large with respect to indenter size, then you can now have problems.  If the curvature is small relative to the scale of the indent, then it's okay; i.e., if you come down and it still looks like a flat surface, it's the indenter because of the differences in scale, then you're okay.

DG:  And, I think you said the 2-3 degree the tolerance which would come into play there.

JD:  Indeed.

DG:  Most anybody that's going to buy this equipment is going to say, “OK, what's in it for me?  Why should I buy this thing as opposed to going the normal route, or things of that sort?”  Talk to us a little bit about the overall expense, overall experience with your equipment.  Why would it be something that people would pick up?

JD:  From an experience point of view, I think one of our key objectives while developing the technology and, indeed, the supporting software, has been to ensure that the experience of using the system is a smooth one.  We've attempted to minimize the level of interaction to these it needs to have with the machine and the software and also to try to maximize the degree of automation.  I think that we've been able to strike the right balance.  I think the workflow is simple and intuitive.  And, importantly, we present the results in a format that the users would recognize if they've previously done conventional mechanical testing.

I think one of the key attributes, if you like, one of the key salable attributes of our system, is that you can measure full stress strength strain curves in just a few minutes, 2 – 3 minutes, so almost in real time.  When you're doing this thing in real time, it's potentially transformative for lots of businesses in lots of different ways because it unlocks that materials testing bottleneck that lots of companies are already familiar with.  I don't like the term, but the value proposition, if you like, is speed of testing, ease of testing and simplicity of testing.  That's where you're going to derive the most value from a machine like ours.

DG:  Do you have any examples of where somebody has used this?  You don't need to mention names, of course, I'm not asking for company names, but maybe an industry where somebody's been able to kind of move their testing into real time testing?  And if you don't, that's also okay.

JD:  I can give you a couple of examples which we can disclose.  We've got some people using our machine for high thru port testing and combinatorial analysis with things like additively manufactured metals.  That is basically where companies that are using additively manufactured systems are very keen to understand how changes in process parameters and changes in alloy composition and changes in powder type and powder size distribution, what effect that has on the mechanical properties.

If you want to do this using conventional systems, you've got to print tensile specimens or other types of bonds, and they you've got to print them and test them.  This is quite cumbersome.  Whereas, with our machine, you can just print a small cube or small disc or something like that, and then you can immediately indent it and get stress strength curves.  You can do, essentially, rapid design exploration and rapid process optimization.

This is not just specific to end processes.  Wherever you've got all the types of thermomechanical processes taking place to develop or design the metals and you need to characterize the corresponding strength characteristics and you want to do it quickly, then you need a machine like ours.

DG:  They wouldn't even need to print the actual part; they'd print a suitably large enough cube, test it, and then you'll know.

JD:  Absolutely.  And that cube, as I've described, could be quite small, it might just be 1 cm cubed in volume and that would be sufficient.  So, actually, the cost of doing this test comes down, as well, because you're not printing lots of material.

We're working with additive manufactured companies right now that are validating the technology.  We're having some of these companies print material for us and it's extremely expensive unfortunately and it's just a process that we have to go through at the moment to prove out the technology.  They can see the benefit themselves of being able to rapidly characterize the strength of their materials.

DG:  Do you want to address, at all, as far as overall lifetime expense investment in a product like yours as opposed to other testing methods?  We talked about workflow, ease of use, ease of reporting and things of that sort.  Any comments on lifetime costs of use?

JD:  Yes, I can say a few things.  First off, our machines typically retail at prices which are comparable to a low end universal mechanical test machine, mid-range for hardness test machines, so sort of right in the middle there.  Although, as I've said before, I think our machine benefits from having the best attributes involved.  It is a robust machine, it's just doing indentation tests, so the longevity and the robustness is good and strong.

There are very few aftermarket parts that you might, conceivably, want to buy to bolt on.  You don't need suitably trained technicians either with backgrounds in mechanical testing or material science; you can press the button and run it.  The lifetime costs, we think, are substantially better than a conventional tensile test machine.  If people want to talk a bit more about the commercial aspect of these machines, they, by all means, can get in touch.

It might be worth mentioning, it's not necessary to buy our machines.  We do have leasing agreements specifically because of these CapEx restrictions that we're seeing out there in market right now, but also because of a certainty you can anyway.  If these go on to operational expenses, then there are certain tax advantages, as well, to doing that.

DG:  Types of companies that would find this to be really helpful.  In other words, are you seeing that a certain industry or a certain type of company are interested in your product, or an industry that should be that is not yet?

JD:  A good question.  We've been extremely surprised, actually, at the level of traction we've been able to generate so far.  We officially launched our machine in November of last year, so we're only 4 or 5 months since the launch.  We're already talking to probably 50 or 60 companies right now, including some major, major tier 1 companies across the world.

I think one of the great things about materials testing is that it is not set or industry specific.  Almost all industries need access to the strength of their materials in order to design new products, for example, or to ensure that the materials or products that they produce are safe to operate and fit for purpose.  At the moment, we're getting a lot of interest from metal producing companies, processing companies from the additive manufacturing community which, traditionally, have been quite difficult to measure the strength of their materials, from aerospace companies to automotive companies to companies engaged in things like failure analysis and also from universities and research institutes, too.

We're really seeing an interest from a very broad range of organizations and I think that is reflective of what I said in the beginning of this question which is that materials testing is not sector or industry specific, it's kind of ubiquitous of all those industries.

DG:  What are you most excited about with this company?  You're, what, 6 months into it maybe as far as actual product out there?  What puts a smile on your face?

JD:  That's a good question.  There are a couple of things that put a smile on my face.  One, I really enjoy working with the people that I've got on my team, who are as enthusiastic and as motivated as me to see this company do well.  And, I also really enjoy talking to the wide range of customers, because what I see when we talk, is them saying, “Gosh, if we would have known about this 5 years ago, we'd be already using it.” or they say, “This is fantastic.  This is exactly what we've been looking for and it can solve this problem and that problem.”  Then, they start coming to me and saying, “Can you also change something up so that we can do this or we can do that?”

So, there's always new potential opportunities arising because of it.  That really excites me, because what it points to is additional opportunities for plastometry.

DG:  What do you worry about?  What keeps you up at night?

JD:  I guess, the immediate concern right now is what the recovery post Covid looks like, especially in certain industries like aerospace which, in ordinary times, would have been an ideal market for a technology like ours.  That's the type of thing that makes me worry.  So, we're keeping a very close eye on what the recovery looks like, not just here in the UK, but also abroad.

The other thing that, I wouldn't so much say worries me, but it is something that we're thinking very hard about, is the standardization methodology, as well.  If you want to get a technology like ours used broadly across all industries, then one thing that crops up a lot is, Is it certified?  Is there a testing standard?  At the moment, there isn't.

We are compliant with a couple of testing standards around instrumented indentation testing.  We're also working, right now, with the National Physical Laboratory in the UK, which is, I guess, our equivalent of your NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).  They are working with us, right now, as a precursor to supporting our efforts towards standardizing our test technology.  It's a 3 – 5 year program, but I think if we can tread that long path properly and get the test methodology certified, then, again, additional opportunities will open to us in those more conservative industries.

DG:  Do you have a presence in North America, or do you have a way of dealing with customers in North America?

JD:  We have no formal way of doing this, and at the moment, it's manageable because we're not getting hundreds of requests every day.  We are shipping machines to North America.  We are managing it internally by ourselves, at the moment.  One of the things that we do have in our back pocket, so to speak, is our relationship with Element, one of our leading investors.  We have a huge North American presence and they can certainly support us where needed, if, for example, we need to set up a base in North America or engage with distributors in North America or something like that.

DG:  We talked before we turned the recording button on about how to properly pronounce your company; it's not plastometrics, it's Plastometrex.  Where would people go if they want to find out more?  If you're comfortable, James, you can give out whatever personal type of information, if you want your cellphone out there or email or whatever, feel free to do that, as well as your website.

JD:  The first place we encourage people to visit is our website, and that is www.plastometrex.com and there is information there about our machine, about its capabilities, there are some FAQs, there are lots of technical articles sort of describing the underlying science, and there are research publications.  It's a really good source of information for people.

One of the other places I point people to is our LinkedIn channel.  We have a very active presence on LinkedIn where we're constantly pushing our material- some technical, some promotional, some lighthearted, some serious.  It's a really good place to engage with us.  We've got lots of educational content going out, as well.  And, of course, people can reach out to me directly at my LinkedIn by searching for James Dean Plastometrex.  They are the three best ways, I would say.

Doug Glenn <br> Publisher <br> Heat Treat Today

Doug Glenn
Publisher
Heat Treat Today

 

 

 

 

 

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

Heat Treat Radio #58: Indentation Plastometry with James Dean of Plastometrex Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #57: Hot Isostatic Pressing – Join the Revolution

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO, HIPING TECHNICAL CONTENT, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT

Heat Treat Today publisher Doug Glenn discusses hot isostatic pressing with Cliff Orcutt of American Isostatic Presses, Inc. Learn about the revolution that is occurring in the heat treat industry and how it is being used across various manufacturing industries

Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited transcript.

 

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Doug Glenn (DG):  First off, Cliff, I want to just welcome you to Heat Treat Radio.  Welcome!

Cliff Orcutt (CO):  Thank you.

DG:  If you don't mind, let's give our listeners just a brief background about you.

CO:  It's been 43 quick years in the industry.  I, actually, did start as a child.  My father was one of the original people at Battelle where it was patented in the '50s, so, I grew up under that.  Right out of school, I went to work for his company, after he and another gentleman left Battelle, Mike Conaway, and they formed Conaway Pressure Systems.  By the time I was 20, I had already installed 10 HIP units around the world and helped design and build the Mini Hipper.

I was involved in 1978 in moving the world's largest HIP unit from Battelle to Crucible Steel in Pittsburgh, which is now ATI.  Also, in 1979/80, we installed the very large system for Babcock and Wilcox at the Naval Nuclear Fuel Division in Lynchburg, VA.  Both of those units, 40 years later, are still running.

I'm also past president of the Advanced Materials Powder Association, part of MPIF, and I was also a director of their Isostatic Pressing Association.  I am currently the chairman of the International HIP Committee.  We put on the triennial HIP conference every 3 years.

DG:  Is that part of APMI?

CO:  It's actually its own group.  It was formed by all of the people in HIP around the world, in Europe and Japan and the United States back in, maybe, 1983 or so.

DG:  What's the name of the organization?

CO:  It's called the International HIP Committee.  It's kind of a loose organization which the only thing that we do is put on this conference and we bring in speakers from around the world and promote HIP technology, basically.  Our last one was in Sydney, Australia in 2017.  We were supposed to have one in October 2020 and now it's pushed until September of 2021.

DG:  Where will that be?

CO:  It's going to be in Columbus, Ohio because that was the original founding city.  Every other conference, we move to the United States, Europe or Japan.  So, it's coming back to the US.  I'm in charge of it.  We have some other good people on the board, including Mike Conaway, who was one of the original Battelle people.  Victor Samarov is on the board helping us with the meeting, programming and so forth.  People can visit www.hip2020.org to see information on that.

DG:  I got you a little distracted on that.  Keep going with your background.

CO:  Personally, in these 43 years, I've installed over 200 units, hands on.  I've flown about 5 million miles, I've been to 38 countries; you name it, I've been there, good ones and bad ones.  In my early years, when my father started this company, they pulled about 6 people out of Battelle and they were, basically, my teachers.  So, instead of going to educational school, I went to HIP school.  We had some of the top people:  Roger Pinney, Hugh Hanes, Don Woesner, Gary Felton and another gentleman, Bob Tavnner, all came out of there.

In 1979, my father passed away, and his company then sold to ASEA who then became ABB who then became ABB Flow and then they became Quintus now.  That's how they have a location in Columbus, as well.

A couple of people, including Bob Tavnner, left and formed International Pressure Service.  That was in 1983.  They hired me as operations manager, and we grew to be a force to be reckoned with and the Japanese then bought us.  At that time, Rajendra Persaud, or Reggie we call him, left and formed AIP (American Isostatic Presses) and I said, “Hey, Reggie, let's have a two person company again rather than two one-person companies.”  That was 1992 and so, 28 years later, now we're a force to be reckoned with again.

DG:  Tell us a little about AIP.

CO:  American Isostatic Presses, when the Japanese bought us, we had a lot of technology and a lot of good people.  Then they hired a new CEO and he decided he didn't want to continue building HIP units, he wanted to do something else.  So, Reggie formed AIP and I joined him and we pulled 5 other people back from ITS.  We sold our first big job in 1994 to Horus in Singapore, a multimillion dollar job, and took off from there and haven't looked back.  We started on a shoestring, no venture capitalists, no dollars, and now we have 4 buildings and locations around the globe.

"We're just a high tech blacksmith, that's all it is.  Instead of hitting something with a hammer, we're using gas pressure to squeeze on it."

DG:  How many units do you think you guys have installed since 1994?

CO:  As AIP, around 150.  It's snowballing.  In the last 5 years, we've sold 5 big units.  Up until that time we were mainly mid and small.  We had orders for some big ones but, unfortunately, we couldn't get export licenses for them.  The technology that grew out of Battelle was based on nuclear fuel rods for the submarines.  Admiral Rickover wanted to extend the life of the sub, so it was protected for quite some time.  And then they also had missile nose cone technologies it was used for and that's still what they're protecting it for is missile nose cones.

We had some orders in the late '90s early 2000 through China for large equipment and we were denied.  Then we were denied in India, so we kind of just got stuck with the smaller to mid-size units.  Here recently, it's starting to expand.  Things are loosening up a little bit.

DG:  AIP today is selling not only in North America, obviously, but you're pretty much selling around the world, anywhere where it is legal to sell, you'll do it.

CO:  Yes, if we can get an export license, we will put it in.  Some of the rules have relaxed a little bit, and, with some countries, we're more friendly with them now.

DG: I think a lot of our listeners are probably not going to be as familiar with HIPing, hot isostatic pressing, as other more common “heat treat operations” like carburizing, hardening, annealing and that type of thing.  Take us back, class 101:  What is HIPing?

CO:  We're just a high tech blacksmith, that's all it is.  Instead of hitting something with a hammer, we're using gas pressure to squeeze on it.  We heat it up hot, we put pressure on it, and we're basically densifying it, making it more dense, and getting rid of imperfections in the metal.

A lot of what's done is castings.  When you have a casting, the metal is hot, so it's expanded.  When it cools, it cools from the outside in, so it freezes on the outside first and then the center starts to shrink.  It creates internal porosity.  Most of that porosity is thermal shrinking which is a void.  So, you put it back in our heat treatment, apply pressure to it and you get rid of the voids that are left.  You make the casting dense and better grain structure and more homogenous.  It increases fatigue in property strength.  That's the number one use of it right now.

Second is probably powder metallurgy where you take powder metals and you can blend powders and you can start with different grain sizes and different materials.  You put them in a container because the gas would go through the container if you didn't have something around it.  So, you squeeze on the container and it densifies whatever is inside of it and you make a solid part.  For example, a lot of powder metallurgy billets which are then used for extruding into other products or rolls and different things.  We do a lot of pump bodies and valves for deep sea work, extruder barrels, you can bond things; there are a whole lot of applications.

DG:  The two things I understand with HIPing are high temperature and high pressure.  Give us a sense of high temperature.  What does that mean?  Is it hotter than a typical heat treat operation?  And how about the pressures?  Give us a sense of what the pressures are looking like.

CO:  A lot of people are familiar with sintering.  That's where you just take the metal up, you sinter it and the grains merge together by melding and attractive forces.  What we're doing is: we're not taking it up to those high temperatures to where the part actually is molten or melting, we're taking them up below that and applying pressure.  Because of the pressure, we're basically pressurize sintering; we're adding force to make it sinter faster or better or at lower temperatures.

Usually, it's about 150 C degree less than sintering temperature.  Again, it depends on the process of what we're trying to do with it.  Typically, most parts are done around 15,000, some parts 30,000.  Here, at AIP, we actually have test units up to 60,000 PSI and we've actually built 100,000 PSI HIP units.  You're above the yield strength of some of the metals you're using.  Most of the majority, again, in like castings, titaniums around 970, steels around 1225, but we go up to 2200 C for some things, even higher for like half-in carbide with people pushing it to 2300.  It's pretty hot, a lot of pressure.  Unfortunately, high temperature and high pressure costs money.  You want to use the lowest pressure and the lowest temperature you can get by with, but sometimes you can't.

DG:  It's harder, I would imagine.  The way I've always heard it said is that the hotter it is, the more difficult it is to keep, let's say, that cylinder container that you're talking about.  If it becomes hotter, it's harder to keep it together.  I would guess you're right, when you've got higher temperatures, things tend to blow apart easier?

CO:  Not so much.  The temperature is contained in the middle of the pressure vessel, so you've got plenty of insulation around it and you keep your container cool.  The goal there, in a HIP unit, because it's the expensive piece of item, you want maximize your work zone, that's where you have to have good engineering to make sure you do keep the container cool.

DG:  Are most of those units water cooled jackets, or are they cold wall?

CO:  They're almost all hot wall, but some of them are cooled internally and some of them are cooled externally.  You still have loss to the metal, whether it's internal or external cooled, but internal gives you faster cooling than the external.

The big advantage of HIPing is, like with some materials like titanium, you can eliminate a lot of machining.  Making chip that you can't really reuse real easy makes a lot of economic sense.  Titanium is a very high melting temperature, so you can't take those chips and melt them cheaply.  Aluminum, you can.  A lot of aluminum, people can't afford to HIP it because you can just recast it.

HIP is an expense process.  The equipment is expense.  It uses argon gas.  Swinging a hammer is cheap, but using gas pressure, it's so compressible, that you have to put a lot in.  You can reclaim some, but the cost is still high.  You're talking medical, aerospace and military, basically.  Forty years ago, I thought every car would have HIP pistons.  It's just not going to happen.  They can't afford it.  I do see Edelbrock and Trickflow both have HIPed aluminum race heads, though.  If you get into where you have the economy of doing something like that, you can apply it.  You're definitely going to get a better product, it's just price versus performance.

Watch an "oldie but goodie" on what HIP is.

DG:  As far as why people want to do the HIPing, I guess, primarily, it's an elimination of, let's say, defects or inclusions or whatever, either cast parts or powder metal parts, you're increasing fatigue strength, and things of that sort.

Are there any other major reasons why people want to HIP?

CO:  Well, there are some things you can't make other ways.  In other words, it's like water and oil, you can't mix them very well and some metals you can't melt them and just make a molten bucket and pour it.  In HIP, since you're starting with powders that are solid, you can blend things like graphite powder and steel.  You couldn't blend them very well in a molten state, but in here, you can.  And, you can squeeze it to solid, you can get interlocking and bonding and diffusion bonding materials that you couldn't otherwise.  So, you can make things you couldn't make any other way.

Also, you can eliminate machining.  For instance, you're making a titanium fitting that has a lot of holes on the inside, it might even be curved and really hard to drill, but you can lay it up and do powder metallurgy around it and make shapes that you couldn't make otherwise.  A lot of parts are pressed and sintered for years, for instance, for transmissions.  Something like that is real easy because it's a small disc and it's not very long.  But, if you're trying to make a real long part that is a strange shape, you can't just press and sinter it.  You can do it from HIPing.  You can do big shapes that you couldn't get enough force on or you can't fit into a press dye.  You can do big shapes that you couldn't get enough force on or you can't fit into a press dye.  It opens up a lot of options.  A missile nose cone, for instance.  There is just almost no way to press and sinter a cone, but with HIPing you can make that shape and you can make it very uniform.  There's really no other way to do it.

DG:  I think that is one of the benefits of HIPing, from what I understand, it is absolutely equal pressure on all parts when you increase the pressure.  It's not like you're only pushing on one part, like with a forge press, or something like that – equal pressure all round.

CO:  Yes.  And it gives you uniform density throughout the part, which is very difficult.

DG:  HIPing is primarily used on castings, powder metal and things of that sort, helps us get a very clean part, if you will, to eliminate inclusions, and minimize the porosity.

You may have mentioned this before, but the actual history of HIPing.  It started at Battelle?

CO:  It started at Battelle [Memorial Institute], I think in '55 or '56.  Again, for the nuclear fuel rods for cladding of the fuel rod.  Four people were involved in the patent, two of them, Ed Hodge and Stan Paprocki, "the two others on the patent were Henry Saller and Russell Dayton" I worked for both of them over my years.  It grew out of Battelle and then in 1975 is when my father and Mike Conaway left and formed Conaway Pressure Systems.  That was kind of like the beginning of the commercialization of it.  There were some other companies, like Autoclave Engineers, that were building high pressure equipment, but they weren't really offering packaged HIP units.  Conaway Pressure, CPSI we called it, was really the origination of commercial HIPs as we know it.

DG:  You hit on this a little bit, but I want to make sure that we're clear on it.  You mentioned the industries that are using it, but let's just review that real quickly, and maybe if you can give any example of parts.  You said, they've got to be higher value parts because the process is expensive, so we're looking at aerospace, medical and that type of thing.  What primarily, at least in those two industries, and other industries if you want to list, are the parts being run?

We’re seeing a lot of application now in ceramics. We see pump plungers and ceramic bearings. Here, at AIP, we do a lot of military work for armor, boron carbides, spinell (21:03), things that are really hard, ceramics. . . You want them perfect because if they have a defect in it, that’s a starting point for a crack. A lot of brakes for jets and fighter jets.

CO:  A lot of extruder barrels.  What happens is you can use a solid steel chunk of metal for the barrel portion but then you can HIP or diffusion-bond powders on the inside of that barrel that might be very expensive.  If you're doing something like a crane or something where the teeth are outside, you can weld on.  A lot of times they'll weld on hard brittle materials that help you dig things with a digger.  But on an extruder barrel, it's on the inside, it's internal; it's very hard to coat down on the inside.  So, we can actually bond those powders to the inside of extruder barrels.

Another big application is sputtering targets.  I don't know if you're familiar with sputtering targets, but they're basically sacrificial material that you plate onto other materials.  The target is just something that is being hit with an electron beam inside a vacuum furnace.  It creates a vapor and by charging the different particles you can attract  them and plate things out.  All of your mirrored windows, all of your hard drives, all of your CDs and DVDs, when you see that mirrored finish on there, that is a sputtered coating and those coatings come from these things we call targets.  What happens is, if say, you're doing a chromium target, at the end,  if you try to molten cast it, if you had a bath or a melt of chromium, it would get oxides in it and be terrible.  But, you can make very pure powders.  That's one of the good things about HIPing is they can make very pure powders by blowing argon through a stream and it makes nice pure powder.  Then, we can put it in and squeeze it into a solid billet and make a target which then can be evaporated in the vacuum chamber for coating.

We're seeing a lot of application now in ceramics.  We see pump plungers and ceramic bearings.  Here, at AIP, we do a lot of military work for armor, boron carbides, spinell (21:03), things that are really hard, ceramics. . . You want them perfect because if they have a defect in it, that's a starting point for a crack. A lot of brakes for jets and fighter jets.

We have a process inside the HIP that we call carbon-carbon impregnation.  We take pressure and we push the carbon into the 3D woven graphite fibers and make brakes and nose cones.  Other materials like beryllium, it's very hard to make beryllium and machine it because it's kind of dangerous, and so forth.  Again, they take powders and the HIP the beryllium to make things like space mirrors and other jet parts.

Now, we've got into more things like teeth and braces are being done with ceramics- new transparent braces made out of aluminum and different materials, zirconia caps for your teeth.  Again, if you don't HIP them and they've got a defect in it, it will be like a plate when you drop it.  But, if you get rid of that defect, now you've got something harder than steel.  On the other end we're doing jewelry such as gold and platinum rings.  The benefit there is you don't have porosity.  If you have porosity, it's like trying to sand a sponge and you can never find a nice perfect surface.  But if you've got rid of that and the sponge is now hard, then you can polish it and you're not taking off any material.

It hasn't really happened too much, but we're seeing rumblings on phone cases.  A lot of those have been metal in the past, but now they want to do the magnetic charging and it doesn't work real well.

DG:  It's got to be glass of some sort, right?

CO:  Yes. We're competing with Gorilla Glass.  Some companies are looking at transferring that to zirconia.  The iPhone watch, or iWatch, they were making it in zirconia, and that's one of the applications and things like that.  Ceramic rings, ceramic knives, ceramic scissors – they're all being HIPed.

On the diffusion front, like the vacuum plates for the fusion reactor, like ITER, they can bond copper to tungsten and different things.  You couldn't really weld them, because if you try to weld tungsten, it gets real brittle and cracks, but you can diffusion bond materials and you can do things you couldn't do otherwise.

DG:  Those are great examples, and I think that gives folks enough.  Are there any other examples that jump to your mind that you think people ought to know about, or is that it?

CO:  The big one right now is 3-D printing.  There is a lot of interest in 3-D body parts, titanium, stents, spines, implants for teeth and screws.  Just about anything you can put in 3-D, they're trying to print.  The problem with 3-D is, it's not perfect yet.  Maybe in 10 years it will be perfect, but they're making imperfect parts when they print them.  If you put them in the HIP and squeeze on it, not you've got a pretty much perfect dense part that's bonded better, stronger, improved properties.

It also allows you to print faster, so maybe you'll want to print an imperfect part, but you can just print twice as fast, so you increase the range between the particle and speed up your process.  Again, price versus performance.  You look at what the benefits of the two ways are.

DG:  I've got a question.  In heat treating, a lot of times after heating, you have to worry about dimensional change of the part, right?  So, I'm thinking to myself, you've got a cast part with some innate porosity and you put it in a HIPing unit.  Do you have to compensate, or do you have to be careful about dimensional change, most notably, I would think, with pressure shrinkage of the part?

CO:  Very little because it's isostatic and we're talking about micro macro small porosity.  If you had a 1 inch hole in the center and you were squeezing that out, you might give it up, but microscopic particle size is really not that much.  Now, in the powder metallurgy, we say it's isostatic but then you do have some of the stresses in the container that you put around it.  You might see some distortion at the corners where you welded a container, and so forth.  But, there's good software out there, there's good programming and things and a lot of empirical data.  People can pretty much design to shape within a couple millimeters.

DG:  You mentioned this earlier, but the gas that's used is predominantly argon, because it's a heavy gas?

CO:  The reason we use argon is the furnaces we use can't run in air or oxygen.  We have a choice of nitrogen or argon, the two commercial grade gases.  Nitrogen also embrittles materials like molybdenum.  It tears up our furnaces, so argon is the preferred choice.  Also, it has poor thermal conductivity which is good for the insulating portion of the HIP unit and when you get it dense enough then it does conduct good enough that it works for the part.  It's the all around cleanest, best gas but it's an inexpensive gas.  We do use nitrogen on some things.  A lot of ceramics like silicon nitride we'll use nitrogen, for different reasons.

One of the biggest issues right now is we see a lot of interest in oxide ceramics.  I've got many customers that want us to build a real high temperature oxygen furnace and we're real close to issuing that.  What it will allow is to actually sinter in the HIP unit at high temperatures under partial oxygen which hasn't been done yet.

DG:  Let's change gears just a little bit.  You actually have two sister companies.  I want to ask you two questions and you can incorporate information about those sister companies with this:  One, why would a company want to outsource a HIPing process?  And, two, on the flip side of that, why would a company want to purchase their own HIPing equipment and do it in-house?  Maybe you can address both of those, because you've got experience on both sides, based on your sister companies.

CO:  The outsourcing is really easy.  If you've only got one part to HIP, you're not going to buy a HIPing unit.  It's quantity versus can you support the operation of the HIP unit.  And, you've got to do it profitably.  You've got to do everything profitably or you're not going to do anything.  You've got to look at the capital equipment cost and the space.  Maybe you don't have space in your building or you don't want to build a new building, or, maybe you just don't have the people that have the knowledge in HIPing and you don't want to hire and train a maintenance crew, and so forth.  Even some big companies like Pratt &Whitney and Wyam-Gordon both owned massive HIP units at one time and they decided it was cheaper to sell the HIP unit to Bodycote and then outsource it.

Sometimes economics may play in there, but sometimes maybe you want to have in-house sourcing.  Maybe your part is so heavy, you can't afford to ship it.  Then, you look at that and say you might want to have your own HIP for that reason, or you've got so many parts, you just can't afford to box them all, ship them out and bring them back.  So, there are reasons why you'd want to own your own HIP unit.

DG:  You've got sister companies that do the service, right?  AIP, American Isostatic Presses, the company that you're with specifically, they build the units.  But you've got sister company that actually does the service.  Tell us about them a little bit.

CO:  When we started out, we were just going to build HIP units and we were selling to a lot of the toll companies and we still do.  But, around 2004, after the economic downturn of 2001, we decided we would get into building our own pressure vessels.  We hired an engineer, Dan Taylor from Hydropack, and started building pressure vessels because we thought we could do it better.  Then we were looking at toll.  A lot of people would come to use and say they were not happy with turnaround or other things and they asked if we could help them toll HIP?  We kind of got drug into it.  We didn't, again, want to step on our customer's toes, so we came out with a different name and sort of hid behind that a little bit and didn't really even market it for a long time.  But then again we kept getting dragged in, so we opened another plant and now, this last year, we opened another one.  I've never seen a toll HIP company go out of business yet or lose money.  Equipment building is up and down, you're riding the waves.  It helped us flatten the curve a little bit.  It flattened out the cash flow curve and it helped us a lot.  Our competitors weren't doing it.  They still aren't really doing it like we're doing it.  The original name was Isostatic Pressing Services (IPS), then when we did our plant in Oregon, we called it ITS, Isostatic Toll Services.  The family wanted to have different names and different people involved and there are different investors.  It's AIP, basically, but there are other family members in the Persaud family.  In Spain, the big one we opened last year, it kept the ITS name, but there are five players in that one, so we're one of the players.

DG:  So, the sister companies have Toll Services, I know one in Oregon.  And one in Ohio?

CO:  The other is in Mississippi and then one in Spain.  The Ohio one is under the AIP name.  Basically, what we do in Ohio is we do more research.  We, again, are expanding here in Columbus.  We are getting ready to build again and we'll start heading a little more into the production toll.  We've got a couple customers that are, again, pulling us that way.  But, right now, Columbus has 5 HIP units, up to abut 500 mm in diameter.  Most of it is high temperature.  In Columbus, we concentrate on 2000 C.  All of our other plants are doing production work which is medical implants and turbine type parts and those are all 1225 C roughly.

DG:  Let's talk about some of the more latest advances, some of the newer things that are coming onto the scene.  You mentioned one, I know, and that was the ceramic oxides.  Let's talk about that a little bit more, and also, are there any other advances in the HIPing world that we should know about.

CO:  I've been in it from almost day one, and it hasn't changed much.  If you look at HIP from 40 years ago and today, they'd look the same.  We still use the same valves and fittings.  The big thing that has changed is computer control.  AIP was one of the very first, I won't say the first because, again, back at Battelle in 1973, they had a Foxboro PDP that was in the whole room and had tape reels in it.  I remember seeing it run a HIP unit, you'd type in STOP and START.  It was like a movie.

Around '93 or '94, AIP branched into computer control pretty hard and we've kind of  led since then.  It allows us to do a lot of things, number one is that we can run it remotely.  So, in Mississippi, we actually run our plant from Columbus.  They load it and we take it over here.  Our guys here in Columbus, they run our units all night by staying at home and watching them.  Computers really help us there.  As for service, we were able to get on the computer and look at a piece of gear in Singapore and fix it.  That's the thing that really helped us.

"Where we're advancing things is in furnace technology for high temperatures, getting these furnaces to last longer, making them more reliable. . . We're trying to hit the everyday guy and make him profitable, get parts in and parts out."

Where we're advancing things is in furnace technology for high temperatures, getting these furnaces to last longer, making them more reliable.  That's kind of one of the keys because, again, with costs and the economics of HIP is you want not to have to be repairing it and replacing things all the time.  That's what we concentrate on.  We don't try to push the edge.  I think some of our competitors really try to push the edge and do things that may or may not be beneficial or even needed, but they're just trying to push the edge of things.  We're not.  We're trying to hit the everyday guy and make him profitable, get parts in and parts out.

As far as the oxygen, that's because ceramics has been coming for a long time and it's still coming.  It's just never really taken off yet, but sooner or later it has to because they're higher temperature, stronger materials in steels, it's just we are competing against forgings and we re competing against casting companies.  That's kind of the whole thing with all the HIP companies.  There are basically only four main players in the world.  We are all kind of small.  We all kind of try to work together as much as we can and we all make good equipment to try to advance HIPing technology.  More than beating up on each other, we try to beat up on the forging companies and the casting companies.  We want to take their business.

In the research here, a lot of what we're doing is trying to work on the higher temperatures and higher pressures.  If you can go to higher pressure, you can drop the temperature which then minimizes grain growth.  In many materials, that improves either clarity of the material, if it's a transparent ceramic, or it can improve the strength of a steel because you have better interlocking between small particles.  We're trying to do a lot more in high pressure, high temperature than some of the other companies.  A lot of the companies are just in the metals only; they really focus on that.  We're doing some really odd things here.  We do stuff that nobody else wants to fool with.

DG:  And you have fun while you do it!  I'm curious, just from my own purposes.  I envision these things as kind of like bell furnaces, a cylinder.  Is that true?  And, how big, on average, is a HIP unit?  What's the work zone dimensions, let's say?

CO:  They start with our smallest one which is about the size of a desk and it has a work zone of about 3 inches x 4 inches.  We can build a little bit smaller, but economy-wise, we just built that one small model and that is the smallest that anyone uses.  It's the size you need for a tensile bar.  Just about every university and lab has an AIP small unit.  Then, they can go up to massive units.  The large one in Japan that Quintus built is 82 inch hot zone.  That's a big diameter.  They're talking about a 100 inch or 110 inch hot zone.

DG:  That's diameter.  How tall was it?

CO:  3 meters.  Some people are looking at 4 meters or even longer.  I've been told that the Army said if you can put a whole tank in one, they'd do it.  One of the drivers there is turbine blades.  As the blades get bigger, like on jet engines, your turbo fan is the outer blades and so forth, those big shrouds as they get bigger, the gas economy gets better, so they would like to build massive engines and they would like some of those parts HIPed.  They want really big HIP units.   Another one is in nuclear reactors for small modular nuclear power.  They'd like to replace some forgings and if they could do it with powder metallurgy lids, and so forth, and those need a 3mm diameter HIP unit.  The majority of the work is in the 1 meter range.

For more information: isostaticpressingservices.com or aiphip.com/links

Doug Glenn <br> Publisher <br> Heat Treat Today

Doug Glenn
Publisher
Heat Treat Today

 

 

 

 

 

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

 

Heat Treat Radio #57: Hot Isostatic Pressing – Join the Revolution Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #56: Metal Hardening 101 with Mark Hemsath, Part 3 of 3

/ FEATURED NEWS, HARDENING TECHNICAL CONTENT, HEAT TREAT RADIO, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT

Heat Treat Today publisher Doug Glenn finishes his conversation with Mark Hemsath about metal hardness basics. Mark, the vice president of Sales - Americas for Nitrex Heat Treating Services, was formerly the vice president of Super IQ and Nitriding at SECO/WARWICK. Learn all about the what, why, and how of hardening. This episode builds upon previous episodes in Part 1 and Part 2.

Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited transcript.

 

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Doug Glenn (DG):  This is our third episode with you, Mark, and the first episode basically we were just dealing with very general, kind of like “Hardness 101” – what is it, why is it important, what materials can be hardened, etc.  The second episode we delved a little bit further into specifics processes like carburizing, nitriding, etc.  If any of the listeners are listening now, they haven't listened to episode one and two, I would recommend that they go back and take a listen to those at their leisure.  What we wanted to do today really was just deal with some of the newer advances, why we're seeing some of those newer advances, why some of the processes are having a bit of a resurgence and talk through some of those things.

What we want to do today is to just deal with some of the newer advances, why we're seeing some of those newer advances, why some of the processes are having a bit of a resurgence and talk through some of those things.

Before we start, I'll just ask you straight up, is there anything from the last episodes that you think we need to reiterate or review, or do you think we did okay on those last ones?

Mark Hemsath (MH):  I think we did well, and I just wanted to say thank you, again, for letting me talk about this.  I think these are some great subjects and I really enjoy doing this.

". . . nitriding, and really its cousin FNC (ferritic nitrocarburizing), are actually fairly inexpensive treatments and they can be performed on final dimension parts.  There is no post machining and there is minimal distortion.  That's kind of my opinion of why it has done well."

DG:  Let's talk about this:  From my perspective, from what I hear around the industry, nitriding seems to be getting a lot of play time, to throw in a radio term.  You hear it a lot.  Why is that?  Why is it that nitriding seems to be growing in popularity?

MH:  Well, Doug, if you were to ask me, which you did, I think it's mainly due to the discovery that nitriding, and really its cousin FNC (ferritic nitrocarburizing), are actually fairly inexpensive treatments and they can be performed on final dimension parts.  There is no post machining and there is minimal distortion.  That's kind of my opinion of why it has done well.  Like I said, nitriding, not quite as much as FNC; they get lumped together but they are distinctly different.

DG:  So, FNC is really the most cost saving?

MH:  Yes, you're going to get a fairly hard surface on the part at fairly short cycle times and low temperature.  So, again, you can use that final dimension part.  You can control that white layer or compound zone, not only in terms of thickness, but also in terms of composition, in other words, how much epsilon versus gamma prime, and its porosity.  This allows for repeatable results and repeatable performance today.  This was not as easy 20 years ago, but it is today.

DG:  And that's because?

MH:  The enhancements of the equipment and controls technology.  We've come a long way with process control, and that sort of thing; it's substantially different.  I always make a joke when we do proposals for equipment, the thing that changes all the time is controls.  Electronics are constantly changing and improving.

DG:  One other question about nitriding before we move off of that:  Are we seeing that growth in popularity in any particular industries or any particular types of products, or would you classify it as across the board?  You and I have spoken before about brake rotors and things of that sort.

Find out more on nitrocarburizing by clicking the image above.

MH:  It has, you're correct.  They've found new uses for it, and brake rotors are one excellent example.  Whole new companies have emerged just to do that sort of process because of the volumes that are out there.  I think a lot of things are being done.  The nice thing about FNC white layer generation on a part is it also has corrosion control, and for automotive that makes a lot of sense.  They're discovering new uses for FNC.   And then nitriding, in general, has the ability in a lot of instances, as well as FNC, to replace carburizing, depending upon how you engineer the part.  There are a lot of reasons to be using nitriding.

DG:  You mentioned carburizing, so let's talk about the next process that I'm hearing a lot about, and that's low pressure carburizing.  Is it actually growing in popularity?  Are we hearing more about it?  And if so, why?

MH:  This is when I think it's a bit different, in my opinion.  I think the surge came many years ago when automakers discovered LPC and it had a lot of good benefits at the same time.  Now, aerospace has discovered it but the volumes aren't as high as they were with automotive.  LPC is a great process, however, I have been scratching my head as to why it has not become more prevalent, and I think I might have some answers for that.

DG:  What are they?  Why not more prevalent?

MH:  First, many applications of LPC, being vacuum in nature, were performed with high pressure gas quenching.  Quenching with high pressure gas limits both load size and materials that you can use that can be quenched in gas, as well as some part geometries, thicker cross sections, etc.  They're very hard to quench when you're dealing with certain steels or alloys with high pressure gas quenching.  Carburizing, which LPC is trying to replace or compliment, it's really a high volume championing of surface hardening.  Hence, per pound, prices are low.  Loads are large and dense and you bring in a better quality methodology but you have a lot of limitations on productivity.  It's going to get more expensive.

DG:  So, you're saying the reason LPC (low pressure carburizing) hasn't taken off is because of the high pressure gas quenching essentially, because you have to do smaller loads?

MH:  Yes.  To get good quenching with gases because of the nature of how the gases flow around the parts and quench them, even at 20 bar nitrogen or helium, it's just extremely difficult to get the quench rates for certain steels that are required.  It is very easy with liquids.

DG:  Right.  So, you've got to either lighten the density of the load so you get more of the gas flow, or more loads or whatever.

MH:  Yes.  In vacuum processing typically they spread the parts out further.  You have to do that for gas quenching because, depending upon where the gases come from, you don't want to be having one part in the path of another part because you're not going to get the same quench rate.  That's still somewhat possible with liquids like oil or water polymer, but certainly not as predominant.

DG:  So that begs the question: Can we do LPC with an oil quench or some sort of quench?  It's not high pressure gas?

MH:  Yes.  And it's been done for quite a long time.  They call it low pressure carburizing or vacuum oil quenching.  You can do both through hardening and carburizing in a vacuum chamber and then you can transfer to oil quenching.  Typically, the way that's been done, over all the years, is you transfer it in-vacuum from the vacuum heating chamber to the vacuum that's over the oil and then you put it into the oil.  That's what you call classical vacuum oil quenching.

DG:  We're talking about high pressure gas quenching and density of loads and things of that sort.  One of the things I have been hearing about is companies trying to do more either small lot semi-continuous processes or, in fact, single piece flow so that they can get around the issue of having to oil quench, they can, in fact, do single parts, high pressure gas quenching and things of that sort.  Comment on that for a little bit.  Are you seeing a growth there?

MH:  As you know, we do offer that product line for single piece flow, so yes, we've been working at it for many years.  One of the driving forces behind single piece flow is that people are already doing it with so-called press quenching.  In those instances, they're taking it out of, typically, a reheat furnace, taking the part out one by one and putting it into a fixture and then quenching it with oil in the fixture to stop distortion as that product cools.

That's a very slow process, very expensive, and very labor intensive unless you can automate that with robots etc.  It typically, like I mentioned, involves, if you're surface hardening, you're probably going to do that in a separate unit, carburize that, slow cool it and then you're going to put it back into a reheat furnace.  So, it really adds to the cost of those parts, but you get some tremendous distortion control on the parts.

"What we're seeing with [press quenching] is the distortion is very, very low, we're not using any oils, we're not using a press quench, we have very low labor inputs and we can put it in line with the manufacturing cell.  The only issue with that technology, and one of the reasons it's been a little bit slow to grow, is that you need relatively uniform part sizes and shapes and pretty large volumes.  But this would usually be part of the process plan."

DG:  That's in press quenching you're talking?

MH:  Yes, that's in press quenching.  Now, what we've come up with is something that we call a UniCase Master when you're doing case hardening with it, we also utilize what we call our 4D Quench.  The 4D Quench is a high pressure gas quench that actually takes many, many nozzles of high pressure gas and puts it right on the part.  The fourth dimension is that we actually spin that part.  If you have an irregular gear, you're getting that gas distribution that's coming out of many, many nozzles, distributed very uniformly all over the part.

What we're seeing with that process is the distortion is very, very low, we're not using any oils, we're not using a press quench, we have very low labor inputs and we can put it in line with the manufacturing cell.  The only issue with that technology, and one of the reasons it's been a little bit slow to grow, is that you need relatively uniform part sizes and shapes and pretty large volumes.  But this would usually be part of the process plan.  We've come up, now, with some varieties of that where we can actually change that 4D press quench to cover a range of sizes and you can program that into the software.

DG:  And on the 4D Quench or the UniCase Master in the quenching process, are you able to treat most of the grades of steel, even oil quench graded, most of those, or is it fairly limited?

MH:  No, it's actually very good.  What we've found is, because we're concentrating that cooling of the high pressure gas is very close to the surface.  I've mentioned before- you're in a batch load, let's say you're in a 24 x 24 x 36 inch load geometry with high pressure gas quench, well those gas nozzles are coming from very far away.  If you go to more standard large size, like a 36 x 36 x 48 inch, the nozzles are even further away from the source.  So, yes, you're getting mass flow across the products, but you're not getting much impingement.  In convective cooling you need jet impingement.  I spent my whole life on this.  As you may recall, I was involved with my father and he had patents on jet impingement.  We come from a long history of working with convection and jet impingement.  Our 4D Quench perfectly optimizes those gas jets coming out and at 4, 6 or 8 bar, we can do the same cooling rate on a gear that you can get with oil.  That's phenomenal.

DG:  How about some of the other advances that we've seen?  I've got a couple of others thrown down here that I'd like you to comment on.  Again, for the listeners, I want the listeners to know that Mark's a very gracious guy.  Even though he works with Seco Vacuum, I've asked him to comment on some other products that are not his, but he'll give you a good perspective on these things, at least an introductory perspective.

Let's talk about hybrid systems, if we can.  We're talking about an integral quench-type system which is where a lot of this hardening process goes on that we've been talking about.  Talk about the hybrid system.

MH:  As we talked before, the vacuum oil quenching has been done for a long time as has integral quench furnaces.  Gas carburizing or gas integral quench furnace has remained pretty much the same for 50 years.  You utilize an oil quench, you try to get as quickly as you can into that oil quench, you have agitation in the oil, which gives you pretty decent quenching.  When you do that in a vacuum oil quench, because you're putting a vacuum over the oil, you'll get too much out-gassing with standard oil so they've had to develop special oils for vacuum oil quenching.

A couple things with vacuum oils: Number one is they're not as fast, they're slower quenching because of the nature of how they make them and the other thing is they're kind of hard to wash off.  They tend to varnish on and give you more problems with that.  People that have to do vacuum oil quenching have learned to like it and do it, but people that are used to doing standard interval quench furnaces, if they like oil at all, which a lot of them don't, a standard oil integral quench furnace has fairly fast oil.  That allows you to put some pretty good sized loads, a lot of productivity, through a standard interval quench furnace.

What we decided to do was, we said, we want to keep that standard interval quench, and if we do that and marry it to a vacuum chamber that can do low pressure carburizing, how would we go about employing that?  We were able to create a furnace that did that.  We're using a standard quench standard oils and instead of having endogas as a blanket atmosphere, we use only nitrogen, dry pure nitrogen.

Then, in the heating chamber, number one is that if you're doing through hardening, you don't have any atmosphere; you're under vacuum.  The good news with being under vacuum is that you don't have any problem with decarb or picking up carbon of your part.  Under vacuum, the nature is that the carbon does not move around, it does not leave the part, and it does not go into the part.  It becomes very easy.  Regular integral quench furnace, you have to condition it and try to get it at the same carbon potential that you have in your part.  It gets a little tricky.  With this furnace, it's very, very simple.

As far as carburizing, when you do it in a low pressure mode – what we call LPC (low pressure carburizing) use only acetylene – you're doing it at fairly low pressure levels, typically in the 5-10 bar range and you're using just acetylene.  You're using what they call a boost diffuse.  Now the key to doing low pressure carburizing, and one of the reasons I think that it has had some issues is in the past, is you need good simulation software.  We happen to offer one called SIM-Vac* and it has years and years, if not decades, of experience behind it so that it's now a very handy tool for the heat treater to know what his cycles and recipes are going to look like in an LPC type furnace.

DG:  Basically, you're doing a vacuum heat cycle, pulling it out of vacuum into a nitrogen chamber and dunking it into a standard oil quench.

MH:  Yes.  We will back-fill with nitrogen at the end of the cycle.  You typically want to drop a little in temperature anyway before you quench, so there's no problem putting cold nitrogen in there.  You get to your transfer temperature and you transfer into the oil.

DG:  Cost comparison between a full vacuum oil quench and this hybrid type system?

MH:  We've done quite a few.  We have two things going against us.  We have electric heating and we're using nitrogen.  However, the gas guys have quite a bit of gas usage because they're using endo generators and there is quite a bit of energy consumed in those endo generators.  When you do the comparison, in a same temperature processing scenario, it's about equal.

However, because our equipment can go to higher temperatures without any challenge at all to our heating furnace, we can go with much faster carburizing cycles.  So, when you start those shorter carburizing cycles, you're using less energy and you're using less gases.  We actually will end up being a little more competitive.  It's kind of counter intuitive, but this is how it really is helping us.  Only going 100 degrees Fahrenheit higher, which is not very uncommon going from 1700 to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, results in almost 50% faster carburizing times.

DG:  You're actually being more efficient with your equipment.

MH: Very efficient.  And you'll actually get more productivity out of our units if you take advantage of the higher temperature.  By going 100, 150, 200 degrees higher in Fahrenheit, you're not going to hurt the furnace, unlike a gas fired radiant tube where you're going to tear it up.

DG:  Comment a little about the true vacuum oil quench systems.

MH:  They are wonderful systems.  We make a great one called Case Master Evolution and we've had that for over 10 years.  It's a great product line.  A lot of other furnace companies have it.  I just read that one vacuum furnace company is going to be offering it in the next year or so.  I saw another vacuum furnace came out with a new line kind of touting the ecological aspects of it.  But we've been doing it for a long time, so we know how good it is.

The only issue with the vacuum oil quench is the equipment is a little more expensive.  For aerospace, that's not a problem.  The equipment is typically not quite as productive and it costs maybe 50% more than standard, basic integral quench furnaces.  That's why we came up with, what we call, our super IQ- try to get the costs down and have the benefits.

Then, based on that, can we also increase the productivity?  We found that we could and it turns out to be much more advantageous money-wise.  However, there are still specifications, there are still people that want to have that vacuum to vacuum transfer.  There are people that want to have that type of aerospace grade type processing.  Our equipment has done very well and I'm sure some of the other guys are selling theirs as well.

DG:  So, there is still a place, obviously, for a full vacuum oil quench system.  Back on the hybrid then, are there other companies that you know of?

MH:  No, I'm not aware of any.

DG:  So, the hybrid system, basically at this point, you guys are the only ones doing it.

MH:  There are two barriers to entry, obviously, into that market.  One obviously is having the vacuum oil quench technology and then converting that technology to what we have which is nitrogen gas, etc.  The other thing is, as I mentioned before, if you don't have the simulation programs, it's going to be hard for you to place it into very high production shops.  In an aerospace shop, you've got a lot of high end people around that can do that for you, that can set up the recipes, etc.  If you're in a basic commercial heat treat shop, you're not going to have that kind of personnel who can be doing that on cycles that change fairly rapidly, without a good tool, and we have that tool.

DG:  I want to ask you one last question.  It's kind of unrelated, kind of related, a little bit different.  We had a podcast we did recently, a four part series we did with Joe Powell with Integrated Heat Treat Solutions.  I'm curious your opinion on this.  He talked about this process of basic quenching, getting the whole surface of the part down to the martensite start temp which basically forms a case around the part and then you can, basically, slow conductive cool from the core inside out.  It has to do with hardening, so I wanted to just throw it out to you.  Did you get a chance to listen to those podcasts or parts of them, and what do you think of that whole process?

MH:  I did.  As you requested, I looked at the podcast on intensive quenching by Joe Powell.  I'll tell you that, I actually can't remember which show it was, one of the last or two heat treat shows, I actually ended up sitting next to him out in the hall somewhere and he handed me a piece of paper and said, “Here!  This is what we're doing.”  I was exposed to it before, but I got into it more now that you showed it to me.  It certainly is science based and he understands the issue of quenching very well.  I point out that our 4D Quench solves many of these issues, but he's coming from his angle on it, and I certainly agree with him.

As you may recall, I probably mentioned it before, my father was in the industry and had 65 patents, mostly heat treat related inventions.  Rarely did we make money off of these ideas.  So, I'm used to a lot of great ideas, but you can't make money.  I think it's challenging in this world of mass production heat treating, where we have carburizing being performed at 50 cents a pound to get engineers, like Joe is wanting to do, to focus on the whole part life cycle and combining that final quench phase with the part design.  I think it's a great idea but I just think it's hard to do.

We kind of know this from experience, and I won't get into it too much, but I think you may know that we have a process called PreNite where we prenitride our parts.  That is a similar type thing where we're trying to take advantage of things that we know are possible in heat treating and prenitriding it allows the grains to not grow when you go to higher temperature to try to get more productivity out of a piece of equipment.

The one thing you've got to do, though, is convince the engineer to use a different alloy so that you don't get grain growth in the core.  Convincing those guys is tough.  We just don't see engineers engaged enough to do this complex reengineering.  That's my opinion only.  I think that's where Joe is going to get some resistance.  I think his ideas are great, and of course, I totally agree with his approach to it.  I could go through some other ideas that I came up with just reading his is almost like should you misquench first before you dunk it in the oil so you get that outer case, as he talked about.  I think it's a lot of great of ideas.

What we need to do is find some really good engineers to break the barrier of those low risk takers that we have in engineering, and I think that's possible.  You may know everybody's out there talking to people like Tesla and SpaceX and some aerospace companies.  These guys are starting to break some of these barriers.  They're starting to saying we don't want to do the status quo, we want to do something different.  If we can do that, a lot more of these technologies will take off.

DG:  We need some early adopters to step up.

MH:  Early adopters.  And people who want to not just be yes-men but really think it through – the whole life cycle of a part, how it's designed and everything else.

DG:  So, dear listener, if you are one of those people, please call us.  We're interested.  We've got a couple of different technologies.  Mark, thanks a lot for your Hardness 101 and helping us out on these three.  I think we covered some good ground.

Doug Glenn <br> Publisher <br> Heat Treat Today
Doug Glenn
Publisher
Heat Treat Today

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio and look in the list of Heat Treat Radio episodes listed.

 

 

Heat Treat Radio #56: Metal Hardening 101 with Mark Hemsath, Part 3 of 3 Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #55: Spotlight on 40 Under 40 Leaders (Part 3 of 3)

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO

In a special Heat Treat Radio series, 40 Under 40 winners from the class of 2020 respond with their stories and insights of their life and work in the heat treat industry. This episode features the stories of Jamie Kuriger, Scott Cumming, and Shawn Orr.

Below, you can listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button and read a few excerpts from this episode.

 

 

Jamie Kuriger

"[I] Met a lot of different people, a lot of different industries where you typically wouldn't think that, on an everyday basis, that there'd be a need for heat treating, but that's kind of the cool thing about this industry."

"It [Covid-19] has made us have to diversify, look for new industries, look for new opportunities. . . We're seeing many many emerging markets, which I'm excited about."

"I'm blessed to be a part of this industry because it's, you know, it's able to be resilient. And the fact that there's still metal that needs to be heat treated, there's still so many opportunities."

Scott Cumming

"I was absolutely amazed at the range of products being treated. Maybe I was a bit naïve to how many products actually received some sort of thermal processing, from teeny screws all the way up to some giant crank shaft."

"As the younger generation, we must continue to question why things have been done a certain way. There's been many cases where I have been speaking with somebody about their current process, and ask how they've developed it. The response: that's the way it's always been done. In some cases, they don't even know why they're doing something a certain way. I love to find ways to improve and simplify processes and prove the old way is not always the best way."

Shawn Orr

"Prior to my involvement in the heat treating industry, I did not realize the material property benefits that heat can introduce for different materials."

"In recent years, things like digital communications, like ethernet IP, have been adopted by the industry giving better access to data from the furnace."

 

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio so see all of the episodes.

Heat Treat Radio #55: Spotlight on 40 Under 40 Leaders (Part 3 of 3) Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #54: Metal Hardening 101 with Mark Hemsath, Part 2 of 3

/ FEATURED NEWS, HARDENING TECHNICAL CONTENT, HEAT TREAT RADIO, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT, VACUUM FURNACES TECHNICAL CONTENT

Heat Treat Today publisher Doug Glenn talks with Mark Hemsath about hardening basics. Mark was formerly the vice president of Super IQ and Nitriding at SECO/WARWICK, and is now the vice president of Sales - Americas for Nitrex Heat Treating Services Learn all about the what, why, and how of hardening. This episode builds upon the first conversation in Part 1.

Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited transcript.

 

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Doug Glenn (DG):  We're here talking about hardness, as it pertains to the metals world, metallurgy, and things of that sort.  First off, Mark, welcome back.

Mark Hemsath (MH):  Thanks, Doug, it's nice to be here.

DG:  For the record, we're recording this thing right before Thanksgiving, the day before Thanksgiving, so we've got turkey on the mind here.  I've known Mark for many, many years, in fact, I would say a couple of decades now, when he was with other companies and doing other things.  He's a very well-rounded person in the industry.  He's able to speak intelligently about a lot of different things, including surface hardness, through hardness and that type of stuff.

Last time, we talked about what hardness was and why it's important.  Afterwards, you and I had some conversations and there were a couple of things I think we wanted to supplement onto that first episode.  One of those things had to do with hardness testing.  Throw out what you were thinking about that.

MH:  I think on testing, the point here is that there are many scales for testing because we have many different types of material with different hardness.  When we start getting into some of the other materials, it changes a little bit.  In the steel realm of things, the most typical is to use a diamond tip weight to try to indent the material.  Based on the pressure it takes, we get a reading.  For instance, a very thin layer may require a different type of test because one style of test may not be set up to measure such a thin hardness.  This is typical in something like nitriding where you have a white layer.  Different types of testing methodologies – there is the Brinell, Vickers, Rockwell and Newage hardness testers, and there are a lot of other things out there, as well.  In general, we are trying to test the surface hardness and then also the hardness as it traverses through the material.

DG:  The other thing that you and I were talking about was other materials besides steels that were hardenable.

MH:  I'm not an expert on aluminum, but one of the materials that we talked about is aluminum, and quite frankly, SECO/Warwick has a separate division just dedicated to aluminum because it is different.    Let's take a look at aluminum first.  Aluminum is actually rather soft and has many other benefits.  It is very commonly used in aerospace and companies like Tesla are using it today, almost predominantly, for their cars.  Just like in steels, it can get harder by using alloying elements.  Most common alloying elements are copper, manganese, silicon, magnesium, zinc and lithium.  Hardening is typically by a precipitation or age hardening.  Tempering is also very common.  So, not all aluminum alloys can be heat treated, per se, but as I was mentioning, it is a whole different world and it requires a whole different set of expertise because it is kind of a unique metal.

DG:  How about titanium?

MH:  Titanium is an increasingly popular alloy.  It is expensive and it has very high strength to weight ratio.  It is almost as light as aluminum but much stronger and also has great resistance to corrosion.  Titanium can be alloyed to add properties to the metal and it can be nitrided at higher temperature making a very thin, hard layer that is gold in color, something that I've done a little bit of in the past.

On of the other materials that you asked about are stainless steels, and this is also a whole different breed.  Recently, in the last 5 – 10 or so years, surface hardening is being applied with great success and it is actually done at low temperatures to make a very hard surface and still retain the corrosion resistance.  When you harden stainless steels via nitriding at the higher temperatures, you do get high hardness but you lose corrosion resistance.  They've made quite a bit of inroads at the low temperature end of things, so called S-phase hardening.  Certain stainless steels, martensitic stainless steels, are actually hardenable by heating and quenching.  Those have, commonly, 11 – 17% chromium and no nickel and they have a higher carbon.  Austenitic stainless steels, typically at 300 series with nickel, do not harden by heating and quenching.  These steels, as I mentioned, can be surface hardened.  Ferritic stainless steels, which is another breed, are commonly a lot of the 400 series stainlesses have 10 – 30% chromium and they do not harden by normal means.  Then, we have some special so-called alloy 17-4 PH and some of the other ones are hardenable by aging.  So, I wanted to go through some of that.  There is a lot there.  But just to discuss all of the variety of different steels out there.

DG:  Let's dive into these five different hardening processes, which we want to talk about, to give our listeners a little better sense of exactly what the process is and how they might differ from one another.  The five we're going to cover are carburizing, nitriding, carbonitriding, FNC, or ferritic nitrocarburizing, and LPC, meaning low pressure carburizing.  Let's go back and just start with, probably, what I think, is the most popular or common one, which is carburizing.  Do you agree?

MH:  Yes, I would tend to agree, especially by pounds.

DG:  First off, what is it?  We covered this last time, but just briefly, let's talk about what carburizing is.

MH:  Very briefly, carburizing is the addition of carbon which adds hardness to the surface and, as I probably mentioned before, it needs to be done at elevated temperatures.  The higher the temperature, the faster the process.

DG:  Basically, break it down.  How's it done? What's the temperature?  What's the atmosphere? What are the times?  General things like that.

MH:  Typically, it's done above 1600 degrees F, which is the austenitic temperature range, and more commonly done at 1650 – 1750 F, which is 900 – 950 C.  In the old days, they put charcoal powder, which is a carbon, near the steel or maybe in a box, and they heated it and that's how they got carbon.  They actually got carbon monoxide gas to form at high temperature and got it to go into the steel.  This will actually crack the charcoal and give you the gas.  Some people still use this, especially if they've got some very big odd shapes; it's the only way to do it.  Somewhat, it is done in other countries, but not as much here.

There is also obviously the gaseous form which is called gas carburizing.  That is typically done with carbon monoxide gas, which is typically created from cracking natural gas or using a nitrogen methanol.  For endothermic gas, it's basically about 40% nitrogen, 40% hydrogen and 20% CO.  In order to increase the carbon content of that gas, people will inject a carbon containing gas like propane or natural gas, etc.

One other method that is still in use is salt bath.  It is also somewhat common and here they use a sodium cyanide (NaCN).  Basically, most of it being done today is with gas carburizing.

DG:  As far as the actual materials?  I assume most of it's going to be your steels being carburized?

MH:  Yes.  Virtually any steel or alloy can be carburized to some extent if it has iron in it.  Iron carbides will form.  Mostly less expensive steels are done.  The so-called low carbon, low alloy steels are typically the ones that are most frequently carburized to get high surface hardness and because they kind of like the core properties that come with it.

DG:  Equipment.  You already hit on this some, but obviously for salt bath, which you mentioned, you're going to have a salt bath piece of equipment to do it.  Gas carburizing is obviously done just inside of an atmosphere furnace, in some capacity, I assume.  Can it be done continuous and/or batch?

MH:  Yes.  The most popular is batch.  The integral quench furnace, which is usually an in-and-out furnace where you have endothermic gas both in the vestibule where you put it where the quench oil is.  Then you go into the furnace, you do your hot temperature carburizing in the same gas, and then you come out hot and you're protected and then you go into the oil quench, and everything is within that atmosphere.  That's the most common.  But, as you mentioned, continuous is very viable.  The only issue with continuous is it's pretty high production and it's usually the same process over and over.  That way you can maximize the use of your quench.  Because quenching might only be 20 – 30 minutes tops, whereas the carburizing cycle might be 8, 10 or 12 hours, you're not using that quench very often.  Continuous will allow you to use a quench much more frequently and that quench might be fairly expensive, so that makes sense for doing the same parts over and over.

DG:  Right.  If you've got super high production, that would be the way to go.  And, it is probably notable to point out here, that quenching is an important part of the carburizing process.  This is not true with some of the other surface modification stuff we're going to talk about down the road, correct?

MH:  Yes.  Quenching is usually done right afterwards, to save money and to make it economical.  That's not to say that there aren't many people, like in press quenching, that will actually carburize it, slow cool it and then heat it up again and then individually quench each part.  There are also some benefits to grain growth.  If you've got a very deep case, that carburizing might cause some growth in your grains.  If you slow cool it and then heat it up quickly again and quench it, you'll transform all that back to the properties that you want.  But, yes, typically all done together.

DG:  Can we carburize using induction technology?

MH:  I'm not familiar with carburizing. . . Induction is typically heating the outer surface and cooling it very quickly and keeping that very hard and then the core will still maintain its property.  That's a thermal surface engineering process induction.  I had an old engineering friend of mine, metallurgist expert, PhD, who calls it surface engineering or thermal chemical surface engineering, because we're using both a chemical process and a temperature process.

DG:  Anything else notable on carburizing before we move on to nitriding?

MH:  The only thing is the alloying elements are common in steels.  I mentioned before low alloy steels and high alloy steels.  Alloying elements common in steels are nickel, silicon, chromium, manganese and molydenum.  Silicon and nickel are less prone to absorb carbon, whereas the carbon potentially atmosphere is increased with elements like chromium, manganese and molydenum which form more stable carbides than iron.  Alloying elements can adjust the ability to carburize.

DG:  That's the basics on carburizing.  Let's move on to nitriding.  If you can, Mark, as we plow through this, maybe draw a bit of a comparison on, for example, temperature ranges and maybe cycle times and materials, and things of that sort.  So, what about nitriding?

MH:  Nitriding is a process where nitrogen atoms are diffused into the steel surface.  I believe that nitriding is more complex than carburizing because hardness, and the types of nitrides created, are dependent on a number of different factors.  So, depending on the process, either ammonia is used or an excited nitrogen atmosphere via a plasma generator can diffuse the nitrogen into the steel surface.  What's common with nitriding is it's done at a lower temperature.  The diffusion of nitrogen is a time and temperature dependent process, so the higher you take the temperature, the faster the process will go.  But, it's still performed at much lower temperatures than carburizing.  It's actually done in the ferritic range and not in the austenitic range, typically, 915 degrees Fahrenheit up to just under 1100 degrees Fahrenheit which is 490 C to 590 C.

Nitriding is a process where nitrogen atoms are diffused into the steel surface. I believe that nitriding is more complex than carburizing because hardness, and the types of nitrides created, are dependent on a number of different factors.

DG:  You're talking 500 – 600 degrees F, roughly, lower temperature than carburizing?

MH:  Yes.

DG:  That's the temperature range.  Obviously, the atmosphere is different because we've got nitrogen as opposed to carbon, but how about process time?

MH:  We talked about the temperature.  Obviously, if you're at the higher end of that temperature, you can go a little faster, but nitriding has been known to be slower than carburizing, and it is.  The diffusion process is slower.  Gas nitriding and plasma nitriding are the two main processes.  There is also ferritic nitrocarburizing, which is a form of nitriding with salts.  But gas nitriding uses ammonia as a nitrogen donor and plasma nitriding uses nitrogen at a partial pressure with a plasma excited atmosphere.  Nitrogen creates iron nitrides in various forms in the white layer as either, what we call, an epsilon layer or a gamma prime layer.  In some instances, people don't even want that layer, they only want the nitrogen to go into the steel and create nitrides with some of the alloying elements.  This is what we call the diffusion into the alloy into the steel into the alpha.

DG:  What about case steps between carburizing and nitriding?  If you want a deeper case step do you tend to go carburizing or is there a difference in the case depth actually?

MH:  It is much more possible to do a deep case step than carburizing.  You can basically keep sending it in there and, if you can go a little bit higher temperature, you can get some pretty deep case steps with carburizing.  The difference between the nitriding, is that it's a different process.  It's a lower temperature process so it's a little bit slower, but you get a pretty hard case with the right alloy with the nitrided case.  In many instances, you can get a pretty similar performance of the part, or something that performs very well, with maybe only one-third of the case.

DG:  When we talked about carburizing, we talked about materials that were 'carburizable'.  How about in nitriding?  What materials are easiest to be nitrided and are there some that we really can't nitride?

MH:  Nitriding is kind of opposite from carburizing.  Most people will carburize the more low alloy or plain steels, whereas in nitriding, we really want to deal with alloy steels that have alloys in it that will be friendly to absorbing nitrogen.  Now, on plain hardened steels, you can get the white layer on there, but you're basically limited to just the white layer for your surface engineering, and you don't get much depth, depending upon what type of alloying elements you have.

DG:  Mark, talk for just a second about this white layer in non-technical terms, if you don't mind.  Is it, simply, the accumulation of nitrogen above the 'surface' of the metal?  What is that white layer?

MH:  No, it actually reacts with the metals in the surface layer.  Because the surface is being hit with a lot of nitrogen, the reactions there will create what we call a white layer where there is a lot of nitrogen activity and those are iron nitrides.  They also will get some carbon that will react in there.  That's a very hard layer, somewhat brittle; it is resistant to corrosion and it also has very low friction property.  A lot of people want that often but when you're going with the higher alloyed steels, there are some applications where you don't want that, let's say, bearing types et cetera where you don't want any small parts that could come off.  The white layer is prone to chipping or coming off, so you wouldn't want that in a bearing, because it's very hard and if it comes off, it can cause problems with your bearing.

DG:  I assume, with all the modern day technology and whatnot, we're able to control that white layer and/or depth of nitriding layer through your process controls and things of that sort.

Leszek Maldzinski
Professor at Poznań University of Technology
Project Leader and Scientific Adviser at SecoWarwick

MH:  Yes.  Nitriding has been around a long time, but one of the problems that they had was controlling the white layer.  Because they basically would just subject it to ammonia and you kind of got what you got.  Then they learned that if you diluted it, you could control it.   That's with gas nitriding.  Then plasma nitriding came around and plasma nitriding is a low nitriding potential process.  What that means is it does not tend to want to create white layer as much.  It's much easier to control when the process itself is not prone to creating a lot of white layer, unlike gas.  Now, in the last 10 – 15 years, people have gotten really good at controlling ammonia concentrations.  They've really learned to understand that. One of the people who was instrumental in understanding that is the inventor of our zero flow control technology, Leszek Maldzinski. Understanding how you change the ammonia nitriding potential to get the type of steel layers that you want is rather complex, but once you understand it and have the tools, you can craft the layer exactly the way you want it with ammonia gas.

DG:  You did talk about the types of equipment that can do nitriding, but just hit on those again.

MH:  Gas nitriding is typically done in a retort to safely hold the ammonia and once the gases start dissociating, we also have hydrogen in there.  Also, ammonia gas is very noxious and can be deadly, so you need something tight to hold it, and that's why they'll do it in a very tight retort.  Plasma nitriding is done under vacuum, partial pressure.  You can do that either in a hot retort or a cold wall vacuum type furnace.  Those are the two main processes.

DG:  If you had a similarly sized carburizing furnace and a nitriding furnace, would you expect that the nitriding furnace would cost more than the carburizing furnace, or vice versa?

MH:  Carburizing furnaces are a little more expensive because you have the addition of the quench and you're also at fairly high temperature.  Those are two cost drivers in carburizing.

DG:  This next one has always been a little confusing for me. Let's see if you can straighten me out:  We talked about carburizing, which is carbon.  We talked about nitriding, which is nitrogen.  And now we go to something called carbonitriding, which sounds to me like the two are holding hands and performing the process.  So, what is it?

"It can be confusing because here in the US we call it carbonitriding and we call the form of nitriding that is FNC (ferritic nitrocarburizing), nitrocarburizing.  In Europe, I've heard them exchange those names.  But, typically, in the US, we call the high temperature process, which is similar to carburizing, we call carbonitriding.  The ferritic, which usually means the low temperature, not austentitic, ferritic nitrocarburizing is a low temp form of nitriding and adding carbon.

MH:  It can be confusing because here in the US we call it carbonitriding and we call the form of nitriding that is FNC (ferritic nitrocarburizing), nitrocarburizing.  In Europe, I've heard them exchange those names.  But, typically, in the US, we call the high temperature process, which is similar to carburizing, we call carbonitriding.  The ferritic, which usually means the low temperature, not austentitic, ferritic nitrocarburizing is a low temp form of nitriding and adding carbon.  Let's go to carbonitriding which is the high temperature version.  It's typically done in low or unalloyed steels that have rather low hardenability.  Increasing the quench rate is rarely possible, so what we do is we add nitrogen and carbon to the surface to increase the surface hardness substantially.  It actually makes a very hard surface.  I usually say this is done for the cheaper steels.

DG:  Meaning the less hardenable steels?

MH:  Yes, and it's done in less alloyed steels, too, because we're just trying to get a thin hard surface on the outside, for whatever application it is.

DG:  And temperature range?  Does it tend to be similar to carburizing, up in the 1600 range?

MH:  It is, but because ammonia breaks down very rapidly at higher temperatures, we like to do this at the lower end of the austenitizing temperature, so in the 1600 – 1650 range, as opposed to the 1700 – 1800 range of carburizing.  Now, that means that the carbon transport to carbon diffusion into your steel surface will be slower, but what we're trying to do is we're trying to get both in there, the carbon and the nitrogen to make that very hard, thin surface.  And, we're trying to do it quickly, because we want to do it cheaply.

DG:  Is carbonitriding kind of an inexpensive way, if you can do it, of carburizing?

MH:  That's what I typically look at it as, yes.  And, it's possible to do a lot of these parts.  Let's say they're stampings or low expense steels.  You can sometimes do that also with ferritic nitrocarburizing if you change the steel grade a little bit.  There are a lot of different ways of hardening some of these small parts or clips or what have you.  Also very common in screws, roofing screws, etc, to get that hard point on there.  It doesn't need to be very thick, it only needs to be drilled into the roof one time.

DG:  So that's carbonitriding.  We talked about temperature ranges.  We talked a bit about the steels that we would use for that.  Equipment that is being used for carbonitriding?  I assume it's more along the lines of the carburizing?

MH:  It's virtually identical.  It's either gas atmosphere, integral quench batch furnace or can be done in continuous fashion.  A lot of people use mesh belts for it, too.

DG:  I neglected to ask you this, back on nitriding.  No quench is involved there, correct?

MH: Correct.  Nitriding has no quench.

DG:  But carbonitriding, you're quenching, because it's kind of a cheap man's carburizing.

Anything else we should know about carbonitriding?

MH:  Just that steels like 1018, 1022, the low end, there are other ones that obviously can be done, but that's typically what's being used.

DG:  Let's go on to the second to last.  We've got two more left.  Nitrocarburizing, or as it's commonly or often referred to, FNC    (ferritic nitrocarburizing), let's talk about it.

MH:  Unlike carbonitriding, which is often confused with ferritic nitrocarburizing, FNC is performed at lower temperatures just like nitriding, but it's typically done a little bit higher temperature than nitriding and it's done just below the initial austenitizing temperature which is around 570 C/1060 F, just below 1100 F you can go to if you're equipment is fairly uniform.  The reason they do that is because in ferritic nitrocarburizing, you're trying to create white layer, and white layer will be much more aggressively created at higher temperatures and also with higher levels of ammonia.

DG:  So, the temperature is the same.  Cycles times.  Obviously, the atmosphere is predominantly nitrogen with a little bit of carbon mixed in, I assume.

MH:  Right.  The nitrogen comes from the ammonia, unless it's a plasma type process, but let's talk gaseous ferritic nitrocarburizing first.  You can put a carbon gas in.  This can be an endogas to get CO, it could be CO2 injected where the CO2 actually will convert to a CO gas, and people have used other gases, but those are the two most popular forms of carbon gas.  What that does, again, because we have typically cheaper steels, they don't have a lot of carbon in the surface, so we want to have a little extra carbon there to get that really hard and aggressive epsilon layer.

DG:  Equipment to be used.  In nitriding, we were potentially using a vacuum furnace, at times.  Do we use vacuum for FNC?

MH:  Well, FNC, just like nitriding, you don't need vacuum for our nitriding furnace, we use vacuum purge.  Because we want the vessel retort to be very tight, making it a vacuum capable vessel, means it's, by definition, tight because you don't want ammonia to leak out.  But, for FNC, people have done this in any number of ways.  For example, bell furnace or tip up furnace.  I've seen people use their integral quench furnaces, the heating chamber.  All you have to do is get to that temperature just below 1100 F, get your ammonia in there and get some sort of carbon gas, and you're going to get a white layer.

DG:  I know when we were talking about nitriding earlier, you mentioned that it was done mostly in a retort, one reason was to contain the ammonia, but you don't necessarily need that in FNC?  Or, is it pretty common that you would use a retort furnace?

MH:  It's commonly done in a retort and commonly done in a pit furnace, but there are people who do it in tip up furnaces.  Like I said, there are people who do it integral quench furnaces, people do it continuously.  Obviously, when you have ammonia involved, the retort makes the environment that you're standing there much nicer, because you can put the ammonia in the furnace as opposed to around you.  Small amounts of ammonia can become choking.  I don't like other furnace designs because they're hard to seal.

DG:  Anything else you think we should know regarding nitrocarburizing?

MH:  It can be done in plasma.  It's less common.  They typically use a carbon gas like methane, or something, to put in there to try to promote some more white layer.  Like I mentioned before, plasma process is typically not very white layer friendly.  But if you put that carbon gas in there and increase the temperature, you can get some pretty decent white layer with it in a plasma setting.

DG:  Let's move on to the last one: low pressure carburizing.  Let's talk about that.

MH:  Again, carburizing is the addition of carbon, right?  So, the difference here is that when we talk low pressure, it's just like a mentioned before with plasma nitriding, it's done at a negative pressure, less than atmosphere.  We call this either low pressure carburizing or vacuum carburizing; it's the same process.  This takes place at pressures typically in the 1 to 15 torr range, which is about 1 to 20 millibar range of pressure.  If you know one atmosphere is 760 torr, so when we're going down to 1 – 15 torr, we're at pretty good vacuum.  Just like with gas carburizing, the higher the temperature, the faster the process.  What's unique with vacuum equipment, is that vacuum equipment is typically capable of going to higher temperatures which adds to the speed of carburizing.  Now, we didn't discuss the design of gas carburizing furnaces that much, but typically they're gas fired and they have radiant tubes.  In the interior of the furnace, the higher temperature you go with the really nasty carburizing atmosphere, it reduces the life of those furnaces substantially, so the people that own the furnaces don't want to go to high temperature.  If you can go 100 degrees higher in temperature, like you can with the vacuum carburizing furnace, the process gets much faster.  That means higher productivity.

One more feature, as well: the initial carburizing of steel at low pressures is actually faster than gaseous  carburizing.  The carbon flux of the surface is very high in LPC.  The diffusion is the same, once you get into the steel itself, but the flux to the surface is very high.  So, shorter, shallower cases are quick, and then, like I said, if you can increase the temperature to increase the diffusion into the steel, on deep cases you can get the cycle less than half.

DG:  How long has LPC been around?

MH:  Technically, it's been around since probably the late 60s.  It had a very slow introduction, in my mind.  That's only because they had trouble really getting it to work reliably.

DG:  Anything else we should be asking?  I assume the steels that can be carburized with LPC are essentially the same?

MH:  Yes.  Steels are the same.  Typically, you want to go a little higher temperature than you would with gas carburizing, so typically above 1700 F and more likely 1750 F – 1850 F.  The big difference is with gas carburizing, as I mentioned, we use endothermic gas which comes from natural gas and then with some enrichment, here the carbon carrier is typically acetylene and that's put in at low pressure.

The other thing is, in gas carburizing, they use oxygen probes and they try to figure out exactly what the carbon potential of the atmosphere is.  It's totally different with low pressure carburizing.  With low pressure carburizing, because you can't really measure it reliably and accurately, we use process simulation software to create the recipes.  By being able to model the surface area of the parts and the total weight of the parts and the material, the temperature and the case thickness that you want, the LPC process becomes very reliable and can perform very well.

DG:  We've had conversations with folks over at Dante Solutions and they say that this LPC is one of the most read items on their website; people are trying to figure out how to do it and how to avoid the carbides and things of that sort.  It sounds like an interesting process.

Anything else we need to talk about on LPC?

MH:  I would like to point out that most LPC has been done in vacuum furnaces in the past with high pressure gas quenching.  You mentioned it's been around a long time.  What they found with high pressure gas quenching is, number one, you can't have a lot of parts in the furnace, which means you have smaller load sizes.  In order for the gases to quench, you have to have very high pressure and also, the parts can't be that thick.

Over time, it really hasn't taken off the way I think it should have.  And some of the equipment was kind of problematic.  There was always done vacuum and oil quenching, but when they combined, and a few manufacturers do this, vacuum and oil quenching with LPC, then the oil quenching allows you basically to use the same steels to get the quench rates and to start to get some heavier loads in your furnace so that you can get the productivity.

This has now driven, what I consider to be, a viable option to gas carburizing.  For instance, with our Super IQ furnace, we use a conventional oil quench.  It's no different than the standard oil quench that most people use in their integral quench furnace.  However, the heating is done in LPC.  The difference is, instead of transferring the load in vacuum, which is what a conventional vacuum furnace will do, or transferring it in a hydrogen and nitrogen atmosphere, we transfer it only in nitrogen.

We have found out that there is no added IGO or any other problems with doing that.  What ends up happening is you can make a less expensive furnace and you don't have to use vacuum quench oils, which are a different breed- they're not as fast, they're more difficult to wash off and clean off.  We think that combination of LPC and standard oil quench makes a very high performing furnace with LPC.  So, it puts LPC into a new interest level, in my mind.  But, again, you still have to have very reliable simulation software.  We have over 10 years of experience putting that software together, so it's very reliable.

DG:  Just so the listeners know, we're doing a 3-part series and we're in #2 right now.  Next time we are going to talk about some of the more conceptual things regarding nitriding LPC and we're going to even talk a little bit about single piece flow because there's been a demand for single piece flow.  We're going to talk about some of the recent advances in some of these systems which we've hit on here just briefly.

Mark, I appreciate it.  This time, I think we've done a good job at covering carburizing, nitriding, carbonitriding, nitrocarburizing and a little bit on LPC.  Next time, we'll look forward to talking with you more about some of these other things.

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today

Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.

To hear this episode and other Heat Treat Radio podcasts, please check out www.heattreattoday.com/media/heat-treat-radio

Heat Treat Radio #54: Metal Hardening 101 with Mark Hemsath, Part 2 of 3 Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #53: Spotlight on 40 Under 40 Leaders (Part 2 of 3)

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In a special Heat Treat Radio series, 40 Under 40 winners from the class of 2020 respond with their stories and insights of their life and work in the heat treat industry. This episode features the stories of Kelly Peters, Bryan Stern, and Andy Muto.

Below, you can listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button and read a few excerpts from this episode.

 

 

Kelly Peters

Kelly Peters, Vice President of Operations, ALD Thermal Treatment

“I thought that this gig would buy me some time to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. Turns out, I grew up here in the plant, and here I am today.”

“There is so much uncertainty and less opportunity in our business at the moment. Major consumers of heat treat are at crossroads: Will the automotive industry go electric, hybrid, stay with engines, or what, and when?...So how do I run a business and plan for the future in so much uncertainty?... Just like any family, will face the challenges together and be better for them.”

“Give those favors time to mature and develop. You never know where they’ll lead unless you give them a chance.”

Bryan Stern

Bryan Stern, Advanced Development Engineer, Solar Manufacturing

“Working at Solar Manufacturing [it’s been] very fulfilling; with the vacuum equipment there’s pressure vessel design, fluids, the design of the water systems, thermodynamics going into that, heat transfer, structural analysis… There’s just a lot of depth and really because it’s, in many cases, a fairly homegrown movement, there’s a lot of room for improvement.”

“From what I’ve seen with almost the disconnect between a customer and what a piece of equipment could do for them if it was applied correctly: There’s a lot of room to bring value to a customer for their process in ways that haven’t really been imagined before.”

Andy Muto

Andy Muto, Operations Manager, Paulo

“I originally was planning on doing my own thing after college in logistics, and did so for a number of years, but in 2014 I decided to move back home and work for Paulo.”

“What really intrigues me in the heat treatment industry is how many different applications require some form of heat treating in order for parts to perform to the necessary level that they need to in the field.”

 

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio so see all of the episodes.

Heat Treat Radio #53: Spotlight on 40 Under 40 Leaders (Part 2 of 3) Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #52: Fluxless, Inert Atmosphere, Induction Brazing with Greg Holland, eldec LLC

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO, INDUCTION HEATING TECHNICAL CONTENT

Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, interviews Greg Holland from eldec LLC on fluxless, inert atmosphere, induction brazing which could be a viable alternative to some flux-base furnace brazing applications.

Below, you can either listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or you can read an edited version of the transcript.

 

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.
Doug Glenn (DG): We are here today with Greg Holland, a sales engineer at eldec LLC, in Auburn Hills, outside of Detroit, Michigan, and we’re going to talk today about a type of interesting induction technology. But first, tell us a little bit about you, your company, position, and how long you've been in the industry.

Greg Holland (GH): I'm a sales engineer at eldec. My main duties are inside sales, marketing activities, trade show coordinating, as well as being a coordinator and scheduler for our in-house coil shop.

Inert gas brazing: set-up
Source: eldec LLC

I've been in the induction industry here for about five years now. Prior to that, I spent time in both air filtration and the thin films industry. I feel that my experiences there have really given me a wide background. It's made me a well-rounded engineer, in my humble opinion, but it's also given me a lot of perspective and some background knowledge that some of my colleagues here don't necessarily have, which has been a good thing.

eldec was established in Germany in 1982 by a gentleman named Wolfgang Schwenk. In 1998, he packed his family up and moved here to Michigan. He established what was at the time eldec Induction USA in 1998. His goal was to better cover the North American market, and what better way to cover a market like that than to be in the market? He continued to have eldec in Europe, and then he started it here in the US.

In 2001, we moved into the building we're in now, and we've been here ever since. We've grown the facility a couple of times; in 2013, eldec, as a whole, was purchased by the EMAG Group from the machine tool industry, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with. At that time, we changed our name to eldec LLC.

DG: Greg, is there an area of specialty that eldec focuses on, or is it “all things induction”?

GH: I would say all things induction. Our office, in particular, does not do a lot of the heat treating. That is handled by our sister company here in the US, EMAG. This is mainly because if they're selling the machine tools, they are typically the customers that are then looking to heat treat. So, it makes more sense for just one person to knock on the door. I'm not saying that we aren't versed in heat treating, we definitely are. Prior to 2013, all of that was sold out of our office in North America, and we have process development capabilities that, I would say, rival what our sister company EMAG has. They are also in the Detroit area.

DG: We're going to talk about something you and I have spoken a bit about, and that is induction, fluxless, inert atmosphere. Let's start at the very basics and work our way through. What is this thing we're talking about?

GH: When you're brazing in normal air, you end up with oxides on your parts. If you don't get the oxides off of your parts, then they end up in the joint between the metal layers and the alloy. A lot of times, people will use a flux. What we are looking to do here is to eliminate the need for that flux; so, we would use an inert atmosphere.

"We are looking to try to get rid of that flux because it adds steps in your process, meaning you have to apply the flux. Then afterward, you have to clean the flux off of the part. A lot of customers aren't afraid to do that, but it's cycle time, right? You have an extra step."

DG: Basically, we're talking about brazing in an atmosphere, using induction without flux, and the primary reason is to get rid of those oxides. You kind of answered this already, but why do we need it? Why do we need that type? What's wrong with using flux?

GH: A typical braze process would use that fluxing agent, so it's either an extra paste that you would put on, or in the event that you have your brazing copper, you would have maybe a silver alloy that would have phosphorous in there. That phosphorous acts as the flux. As the alloy melts the phosphorous, it interacts with the copper oxides and basically cleans the joint for you. It also allows the alloy to wet flow and fill the joint gaps.

We are looking to try to get rid of that flux because it adds steps in your process, meaning you have to apply the flux. Then afterward, you have to clean the flux off of the part. A lot of customers aren't afraid to do that, but it's cycle time, right? You have an extra step. So, it's time, or maybe it's an extra person, whatever the case may be. By eliminating that flux, you've eliminated those steps. You don't have to worry about cleaning the part afterwards, and if you're washing the parts to get the flux off, then you don't have to figure out what to do with that wastewater.

DG: Walk us through a typical braze process that uses flux. Let me try this and you tell me if I'm good. Basically, you've got to apply the flux, and then you also have to apply some sort of a braze paste, I would assume, correct? The actual filler material?

GH: Yes. You can use a paste. What we typically use is solid alloy. If you're brazing, say in tube brazing where your joints are round, a lot of the alloy will come as a ring. You can get it specially made from a supplier as a ring, so it slides right down over your tube. If you have plates that you're brazing together, you can get a foil. It's essentially a thin sheet that you can put between the plates. You can also use a stick form, almost like a welding stick or welding rod type. Or, if you have a trough that you're trying to braze, you can get it in pellet form--little solid pieces that will go down into that trough.

DG: So, if you were doing it with flux, you would apply a flux first, then those things, and then, of course, you'd have all of the cleanup of the flux afterwards, I assume.

GH: Correct. And typically, even before you put the flux on, you want to clean the parts and make sure that you don't have dirt and dust and other types of debris in there, too.

DG: It sounds like this brazing process, where it's fluxless, is replacing a standard flux-based brazing. We've already answered the question about the significance of fluxless; basically, you're not having to use that. The other part of the description is that it's in an inert atmosphere. I would imagine that everybody knows what an inert atmosphere is, but if you don't mind, explain what is inert atmosphere and why we need it for this process.

GH: By definition, an inert gas is essentially a gas that doesn't react with anything. You're looking at helium, argon, or nitrogen. Technically, an inert atmosphere could also be a vacuum. What the goal is here, amongst some other things, is to get the oxygen out and away from the joint. By using a vacuum, you have to essentially create a chamber that is airtight. Because, as you pull a vacuum, if it's not airtight, the oxygen in the normal atmosphere is going to be seeping into that chamber.

The advantage of an inert gas atmosphere is, by filling the chamber with a nitrogen or an argon, you essentially create a higher pressure in the chamber than you do in normal atmosphere, and so you don't have to be airtight. In all actuality, you don't want to be airtight because you want to be able to purge that space and allow the air that is in there to flow out.

DG: So, you're back filling. And, by the way, for those listening, we will put a link on the transcript of this podcast, to the video that you sent that actually shows that process. It's hard to see on radio!

GH: That's actually a process that we have as part of our trade show display. At various trade shows we'll have different displays, and that one in particular, is stainless steel brazing in an inert atmosphere.

Inert gas brazing: at braze temperature
Source: eldec LLC

DG: I'll describe it here just for a bit. Basically, there is a cylinder and they've got two parts inside that need to be brazed together. The cylinder, let's say it's a foot in diameter and maybe 16 or so inches tall, is a clear glass cylinder that comes down over the parts. I assume that you back fill with an argon or a nitrogen, and flush all of the oxygen out, and then it goes through a certain heating cycle and certain different KW and whatnot, and then cools at the end. Then, the lid lifts and you're off and running. That's basically how it looks

DG: Describe to us, if you don't mind, some of the industries that would use this process. What are the applications here?

GH: What we see is more so with stainless steel tube brazing, like fluid lines, automotive fuel lines, and that kind of a thing, where the end product doesn't get painted. It could be in an area that is visible to people, though, so they want it to look aesthetically pleasing. Those are the industries and processes where this gets used, but, ultimately, it can be used in any brazing application where you're currently using flux and don't want to have that additional step.

DG: You mentioned the automotive industry. Are there any other industries that you've seen it used in?

GH: We've had some other customers with essentially fittings on the end of a tube type of an application. I don't know what type of industries they ended up putting those into, but things like that are typically where we see these. But, again, it can be anything where you're heating, and honestly, it doesn't even have to be just brazing. If you have to heat something like that, you don't want to have the oxide layers and the discoloration. If you are back filling and purging that chamber with the inert gas, then as the part cools, and you allow it to cool in that inert atmosphere below the oxidation temperature, then you end up with a part that essentially doesn't even look like it was heated.

DG: Could this inert, fluxless, induction brazing potentially replace belt furnace brazing? Perhaps in some batch processes or torch brazing? Are there any savings in the process as far as manpower? I'm assuming you've still got to have somebody loading up the fixture to be brazed, right?

GH: Sure. You still have to have the fixture loaded. Depending on how the cell is laid out, it could be loaded manually, and it could be loaded by robot. You have some manpower requirements there. Typically, the actual loading isn't that much different than what you would have to do to load those parts into a fixture going through a belt furnace or to load them into a fixture heating them with a torch.

The advantage of induction over those two is not necessarily capital investment, but operating costs in the long run. You don't have the high cost of your gas. Typically, induction is more efficient than a furnace. It is a lot more efficient than a torch. You've got a guy out there with a torch that is heating your part, and then all of a sudden, he takes the torch and points it away as he does something else. All the while, the is gas burning, doing nothing. Again, with the furnace, whether you have a part flowing through there or not, you're heating that furnace and keeping it hot.

DG: Exactly. Whereas with induction, you're applying the heat and being done with it. Describe in a little bit more detail the actual process for an inert brazing process, fluxless.

GH: The chamber that you saw in the video is a large glass cylinder. They're not typically built like that. That one is built so that you can show it off and allow people to see what's actually going on. A lot of times, the chambers are much smaller. The goal is to make the space that you have to purge as small as possible, but still contain all areas of the part where the heat is going, because all of the space in that chamber has to be purged. That's an expense, so you want to limit that.

Now, depending on how long that purge cycle takes, how large your parts are, how long it takes to get to the temperature where oxidation starts to occur, you can start heating before the purge cycle is even done as long as you make sure that by the time you hit that oxidation temperature, all of the oxygen is gone. Then, you heat your part up to whatever temperature you need for your specific process.

Inert gas shield braze process where the customer wanted to eliminate oxidation in the joint area but was not concerned with oxidation of any other area of the part. As you can see in Figure A, the braze area and pipe coupling are inside of an inert gas shield and are not oxidized, whereas the housing is clearly oxidized (Figure B) as the braze cycle finishes.
Source: eldec LLC

In brazing, it depends on what type of alloy is being used and what your base metals are. And then, depending on how the coil design had to be designed for your process in your part shape, you might have to allow some additional soak time. Say you are putting a really weird-shaped fitting on the end of a part; you might not be able to get a full surround coil over the tube that's going into that fitting and realistically get that back out of the assembly. You might have a coil that only goes around 120 or 180 degrees, so to allow the heat to transfer around to the rest of that joint and come to a uniform temperature for the alloy to flow, a lot of times you have a little bit of a soak time. Which is what you see in that video, as well. After the soak time, the operator can typically see through a little window; or with our power supplies, we create a recipe with a set temperature, set power, whatever the case may be if you're using a pyrometer or not, and a specified length of time, and through a little bit of process development in the very beginning, we can create that recipe. So, from a push of a button, the operator doesn't even have to see, necessarily, whether the alloy is flowing or not.

We know for development you need this much power at this much time, maybe you need two or three steps at different powers and different times, and then, all of a sudden, you know that you're going to have a good joint, you shut the power off and allow the part to cool again in that inert atmosphere. If you're not worried about aesthetics, maybe you have a part that's going to get painted and the oxides are going to affect the adhesion of that paint, or you know that you're going to have to bead blast the part anyway, maybe you're not worried about it cooling in the atmosphere, in which case you don't have that cooling step, you can just open the chamber (but be careful because then you just have a hot part). You could essentially just open the chamber and pull that part out.

DG: Would you have to do it all in an inert atmosphere, if that were the case?  If you weren't worried about the oxides, you could almost do it without, at all, right?

"What we typically see there, is we're up against a furnace brace and it boils down to not only capital investment, but operating costs in the long run, what the part volumes are."

GH: If you're just heating the part. But if you're looking to braze the part, you still either have to use the flux or the inert atmosphere to keep the oxide out of the joint area.

DG: It went through the cooling process, so now it's done.

GH: Yes, that's basically the process. Then, your chamber would open once the parts cool and your operator or your robot could unload the part and load the next one. Because of the purge and cool down time, a lot of customers will end up with a unit, a power supply, that has multiple outputs on it.

For example, we’ve built a unit with three outputs for a customer multiple times. So, in that particular case, there’s a part that has two or three different braze joint locations on it. However, what you are essentially looking at is the operator. Even if it's the exact same part in all three cases, the operator can load the part in one location, allow it to start purging, and then he can load the part in the next location. When the purge cycle is over, you can have that heat time automatically start with a self-controller.

So, the operator is literally just loading station after station, and when the first one is done, the second one is loaded, purged, and ready to heat; then the third one, and off you go. By the time the operator comes back to the first one, the part is cool, the chamber opens, and he takes it out.

Essentially, you just have an operator that is loading and unloading parts and you've saved all that cycle time by having a machine that is incrementally more capital investment but saves you so much in cycle time and process flow.

DG: Right. So, you're using that cooling time or soak time to do another function which keeps your production up. Can you tell us, without naming companies, any specific examples of where this was implemented and specifically what processes it might have replaced?

GH: The one that had the three outputs that I just talked about was for automotive fuel lines. Again, I can't say the customer’s name, and I can't say which OEM the parts actually went into, but I can tell you that it was automotive fuel lines. What we typically see there, is we're up against a furnace brace and it boils down to not only capital investment, but operating costs in the long run, what the part volumes are. If it's a car model that they don't sell a lot, then they may not be able to justify the capital cost of the induction, but if you're running typical automotive volumes, then the induction portion, split over however many hundreds of thousands of parts a year, is peanuts in the end.

DG: Do you have a sense of what the cost savings was per part or anything of that sort on that example you gave?

GH: Unfortunately, I don't. A lot of our customers don't share that kind of information.

DG: Wouldn't it be nice if they told you, because it would be a great selling point to be able to say, “Hey listen, they were furnace brazing these that cost them so much per part, now they're inert fluxless brazing with induction and it cost X minus whatever per part.” That would be a great marketing thing.

DG: I guess it's probably worth mentioning here that eldec does all different types of induction, not just inert, atmosphere, fluxless brazing, right? You're doing all kinds of different types of stuff. We were just focusing in on that specific process.

If people want to get in touch with you, Greg, or just to check out eldec, where do they want to go?

GH: We can be reached through our website. eldec actually has two different websites. We have a website that is essentially a worldwide website. I think there's eight different languages on it that you can choose from. That is www.eldec.net. On that website you'll see a lot of product lines and applications.

But here, specifically in North America, we have developed a site called www.inductionheatingexperts.com. That site is more tailored to our market here in North America. On that site, you won't necessarily see as much of the heat treating, because as I mentioned earlier, our sister company EMAG handles that. If you're interested in that, their website is www.emag.com. Here in our office, our main phone number is 248-364-4750 and our general email address is info@eldec-usa.com. Me personally, you can reach me at my desk at 248-630-7756 and my email address is gholland@emag.com.

DG: I did have one other question and that is what other resources are offered by eldec?

eldec’s new online app, the Coil Design Assistant
Source: www.inductionheatingexperts.com

GH: I mentioned our websites. Both websites will show a list of our products. There is at least one product line that is on the North America site that is not on the other site, and that's one that we developed and specifically developed here in North America. That's called our MiniMICO .

But also on our North American site is a tool that we've developed this year called the Coil Design Assistant. That's our CDA. I believe you guys did a little feature on it not that long ago, but that is a feature where customers can go on our website and essentially find a variety of different coil types and they can put in what dimensions they think they want or need and then we get an email and we can essentially do an approval drawing and a quote for them right there off of the web.

DG: Basically, it's a web tool to help you design a coil.

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today

Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.

To hear this episode and other Heat Treat Radio podcasts, please check out www.heattreattoday.com/media/heat-treat-radio

Heat Treat Radio #52: Fluxless, Inert Atmosphere, Induction Brazing with Greg Holland, eldec LLC Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #51: Spotlight on 40 Under 40 Leaders (Part 1 of 3)

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In a special Heat Treat Radio series, 40 Under 40 winners from the class of 2020 respond with their stories and insights of their life and work in the heat treat industry. This episode features the stories of Luke Wright, Nathan Durham, and Alberto Cantú.

This episode in the series also features an update from a past alum; in this episode, Kyle Hummel of Contour Hardening  shares his journey over the last several years and how he has grown as a person in heat treat.

Below, you can listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button and read a few excerpts from this episode.

 

Luke Wright

Luke Wright
Senior Engineer
JTEKT North America Corporation / Koyo Bearings

“So, we had a void in the heat treating department. We had three new hires — 2 others including myself at the time. They kind of shuffled us around: one went to assembly and I got put in heat treat with one of the others. They figured heat treat was difficult enough for two green engineers. I kind of picked it up as I went along.”

“I guess that’s kinda what I really like — sort of this black box science that everyone wants to talk about, and there’s so many things we have to just say, Well, I’m not really sure. We turn this knob and it tends to work better that way. But then, there’s also really detailed science and theory that kind of guides you and that gut feel, twist-that-knob practical application.”

“Something that I’ve been trying to do more lately in my job is to explain more about what I’m doing, what’s going on with the others around me — maintenance workers, furnace operators, or supervisors — instead of just keeping to myself or pushing them out of the way to just do the thing myself if they don’t understand: Doing a little more to work alongside people.”

 

Nathan Durham

Nathan Durham
Aftermarket Sales Manager
Ipsen

“As we near the end of 2020 and reflect on the many, many challenges that arose, I’m truly motivated by the diversity and resilience of our industry[…] We’ll persevere through this pandemic, and push forward into 2021.”

“During my tenure at Ipsen, I’ve realized how important it is to always remain flexible within a career and adapt to what your company and what your customer are asking you.”

“Thank you again, as I’m truly humbled to be a part, and associated with, such great company, and the future of our industry.”

Alberto Cantú

Alberto Cantú
VP Combustion, Control and Services
Nutec Bickley

“I started as an R&D manager. I had completed a PhD on the computation of fluid dynamics and used these tools to design new furnaces. But lately, I’ve been more involved in sales and business development.”

“On the one hand, the computation of power has been increasing — I’m going to say since the birth of computers, but lately more and more — but then the internet and the whole internet of things and Industry 4.0 coming together… You can do a lot of things with both the calculations and the ability to have the information in real time. I think many of these operating procedures that were mainly based on ‘rules of thumb’ and heuristics will change[…] to be based on machine learning…”

“I would suggest [for young heat treaters] to get involved in tradeshows, subscribe to newsletters, make sure you read all the news in the magazines available and in companies so that you get up-to-date in all things happening in the industry because, as I said, it’s vey exciting and I see a bright future.”

Kyle Hummel

Kyle Hummel
Chief Operating Officer
Contour Hardening

“Professionally, I’ve been honored to accept a promotion and am now responsible for overseeing our operations. And on top of that, I’m currently studying for my very last finals to get my MBA in which I’ll graduate May.”

“The heat treatment industry is such a broad field of processes and technologies that anyone can get really excited about. I also think that heat treating can offer the perfect balance of hands-on work experience as well as quality and process improvement that can keep you engaged for years as you continue to grow your career.”

“I’m personally excited to see how the heat treat industry adapts to the next five years as electric vehicles sales continue to rise in the US. I believe this will be an opportunity for heat treaters to start thinking about  how to broaden their service offerings and expanding into other industries as well.”

 

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio so see all of the episodes.

Heat Treat Radio #51: Spotlight on 40 Under 40 Leaders (Part 1 of 3) Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #50: Justin Rydzewski and James Hawthorne on CQI-9 Rev.4 (Part 4 of 4) – Expert Advice

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT RADIO

Welcome back to the show. Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, wraps up a four-part series on CQI-9 Revision 4 changes with Acument Global Technologies’ James Hawthorne and Controls Service Inc. Justin Rydzewski. In this final episode, both of these experts give their advice on how to navigate and comply with Rev 4.

To find the previous episodes in this series, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio.

Below, you can listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button or read the edited transcript.

 

 

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Doug Glenn (DG):  We're here today with Justin Rydzewski who is the director of sales and marketing of Controls Service, Inc. in Livonia, Michigan and also with James Hawthorne, heat treat specialist at Acument Global Technologies.  Both of these gentlemen have been with us for two or three of the last three episodes that we put together.  James, was the committee chair, I believe that's the right title, for the Revision 4, and Justin, of course, was right alongside on the committee getting things done.  Gentlemen, first off, welcome back to Heat Treat Radio.

Justin Rydzewski (JR):  Glad to be here.

James Hawthorne (JH):  Thank you, Doug.  Glad to be here.

DG:  We've covered a lot of the major changes, a lot of the main points that people ought to know, on the first three episodes.  We want to wrap it up today by asking a couple of very practical questions, a couple of “opinion” questions, but, I think, also a couple of very practical questions on implementation, and things of that sort, of the new CQI-9 Rev 4.

Justin, if you don't mind, I'd like to start with you and address an issue that I think you and I touched on in the very first episode, and that was the difference between the CQI-9 standard and AM2750F, specifically, about the automotive industry.  Why doesn't it just adopt AMS2750F as opposed to having this separate CQI-9 standard?

Episode 1 of 3 of AMS2750 series

JR:  I think that both specifications are appropriate for their industries.  But, there are some significant differences between the two.  First and foremost, one is intended for aerospace and the other for automotive.  AMS2750F, as we've mentioned in a previous episode, is a pyrometry standard, whereas CQI-9 is a system assessment; it is a process-based approach to things, whereas AMS2750 is more equipment based.  You classify things by temperature tolerances, by the instrumentation type that you have, whereas requirements within CQI-9 are generally based on your type of process and specific to your process, in particular.

I would say that the most significant difference between the two documents is AMS2750 is part of the NADCAP program and requires accreditation and an auditing body, PRI, to come out and say, “Yep, you're good to go.  Here's your certificate.  We'll see you in a year”.  CQI-9 is intended to be a self-assessment.  It's intended for heat treaters to implement themselves to provide them with a process of managing their heat treat and that doesn't require somebody to come in and accredit them and hand them a certificate.

There is a big difference between the two; they are not equals.  There are similarities, especially in the pyrometry section.  At one point, AMS was heavily sited inside of CQI-9.  Since its removal, however, we've had success, and that success has been measurable; it's been significant.  I would image that the OEs have been rather happy with what it is that they have there in the document, especially in the 4th edition, and I think that the thought of going to an AMS2750 and abandoning CQI-9 is well outside the realm of plausible.

JH:  One thing I would add here is, if you read the headers for each section of the HTSA, section one is “Management Responsibility and Quality Planning”, section two is “Floor and Material Handling Responsibilities”, and section three is the equipment.  On the equipment side, you're going to get more into the pyrometry side of things- the metrology and the maintenance specifics to that equipment, as well.  So, the all-encompassing HTSA is a system that is a management system, or at least a system that you can develop a management system based behind, and ensure compliance.

DG:  For those who are just joining on this episode, HTSA, heat treat system assessment, is one of the main parts of the CQI standard.  Justin, I think your point is good.  James, I think, as well, the point is well taken.  CQI-9 is meant to be an internal tool, a continuous improvement tool that helps a company that is involved with heat treating to continually improve their process.  AMS2750F specifically, is pretty much exclusively a pyrometry certification program, where you've got to have somebody coming from the outside.  I remember, back in the day, when they were first starting one of the QS standards, they said, no longer are you going to have to comply or get qualified by this OE, or this prime, or this prime, now you can have one standard.  Has that been the case here?  Has it been effective in the automotive industry, CQI-9?

JH:  I think, 100%, Doug.  It's like IATF – all of the automotive industry has to be compliant to that.  Same thing with CQI-9.  It provides that commonality for all heat treaters in all the different processes that are employed at their facilities, or the multiple facilities that they may have.  For a company like ours, we have 8 companies in North America.  For the North American side of things that have heat treat furnaces in them, we have induction furnaces, we have carbonitriding furnaces, and we have stress relief furnaces.  So that commonality even helps us internally with our management system and how we take steps to provide that common approach and compliance to CQI-9.

[blockquote author="Justin Rydzewski" style="1"]The CQI-9 intent largely was that this is something that you can do yourself and implement yourself.  We'll provide you with the guidance and put it in simple terms and give you all the research you need to support this on your own.[/blockquote]

JR:  I think that also bodes well, up the ladder as well, for the OEs.  The more commonality that exists in the industry, the wider that, for lack of a better term, talent pool is.  The more people, the more sources that you can go to in order to have work done and have it what you expect it to be, from a quality standpoint.

I think one of the things that CQI-9 has done really well is they've made a concerted effort to make that document easier to understand and to simplify things down to just its bare bone necessities, whereas some of the other specifications that exist in industry can be lacking.  There is a real good reason why a lot of the work of some of those other pyrometry specifications out there are outsourced, because the expertise to adhere to those things and be confident that you're adhering to those things is possessed by an in-house team; they have to go outside.  The CQI-9 intent largely was that this is something that you can do yourself and implement yourself.  We'll provide you with the guidance and put it in simple terms and give you all the research you need to support this on your own.

Justin Rydzewski, James Hawthorne, and Doug Glenn (clockwise from the left) sat around the virtual screen to hash out a few final expert opinions on CQI-9.

DG:  I'm pretty sure, based on everything we've talked about, that you guys really like CQI-9.

JH:  100%!  I embrace it and our company embraces it.

DG:  So, I know you guys like it, you're the main cheerleaders.  What is your perception about companies outside of yourself?  Has it, in fact, been embraced, or has it kind of been “Heisman trophied”, the stiff arm – “We'll embrace you with one extended arm”.

JH:  If I may, I will say that it's been embraced across the industry through all heat treaters.  I think anywhere that anybody deemed it to be a burden, I think with the changes to the format, the added clarity, the improvements to the document, the knowledge base that's now been updated in the glossary, it is all going to help those guys cross any bridge that they were struggling with and make it better for them.

I believe we touched on a little bit in one of the past episodes, or maybe it was when Justin and I were talking about this offline, but one of our customers, who is a non-automotive customer, embraces CQI-9 and our systems and our approach to our heat treat.  That is a huge step because that particular company has a lot of internal specification as it pertains to heat treat, but CQI-9 is either equal to or exceeds what their expectation is.  It makes it easy for them to embrace it.  That was one of the things that was brought up in the roll-out presentation we did through AIAT – one of the other industries had mentioned they were following it.

DG:  It sounds like, overall, it has been fairly well embraced and this Rev 4 is going to make it even easier to cuddle up with a cup of hot cocoa and feel comfortable with it.

JR:  Generally speaking, in my travels, I have two categories of people that I come across.  You have the sort that is looking to embrace it.  They recognize that it's a “have to do” and they just want to know what the rules are.  They want to make sure that they understand what the rules are and that they make sense.  Maybe there is a point or two that they take exception to about, not fully understanding what the intent is of it, but, for the most part, by and large, they want to adhere to the requirements.  They recognize that they need to.

The other category includes those who fight anything that they're asked to do, no matter what it is.  “No, I don't want to do that.  We've been doing it this way forever.  Convince me, show me, that I'm doing it wrong.  I do some sort of subsequent testing and it always come out fine.  I've never had any complaints.  Why do I have to go do this?”  While that group is definitely the minority, I can tell you that that group, almost 100% of those people are going to be those types that you find more issues with than any other.  That's because they fight it and they try to find ways to circumvent things.  That's a real slippery slope there.

I think CQI-9 does a real good job at trying to keep things in its lane and recognize that if there's something that we're asking the heat treater to do, that that requirement needs to provide value on some level, or it needs to mitigate risk on some level, and a meaningful one at that.

You asked, “Do I like CQI-9?”  I like AMS2750 too.  There are some things in AMS2750 I like better than what we did in CQI-9.  Talking from experience of having to write some of the requirements in the document, and how difficult that can be to say what it is you want to say but in a manner that makes sense outside of your own brain, it's difficult.  I think AMS states some things very, very well.  I like their thermocouple calibration certificate requirements better than ours; I think they're more detailed.  But I think both work really well, and embracing it sometimes just requires a bit of an education or an understanding of the intent side of things, the purpose side of things.

DG:  When was CQI-9 Rev 4 released?

JR:  The last week of June.

DG:  It's been going on for months now.  How about timing?  I would imagine that a lot of people that are listening to this probably know that they need to comply with certain aspects of CQI-9.  What is the timing for them?  When do they need to have all their ducks in order?

JH:  During the roll out presentation, the OEMs made a joint statement.  We did that roll out presentation in September, and they essentially said that the time between the June release and that (roll-out) presentation was the grace period.  When the 3rd edition expired, you have to do 4th edition assessment and they will no longer accept 3rd edition assessments at that point.  So, whenever your expiration is, you shall do it to the 4th edition.

JR:  The 3rd edition is officially obsolete.

DG:  So if you're doing another assessment, it's going to be a Rev 4 assessment.  Are there any other timing issues that people need to be aware of?

JR:  That should pretty much cover everything.  If you're outsourcing an element of your service or of a material, you should be specifying adherence or conformance to the 4th edition at this point.

DG:  So, James, I want to address this next question to you, if you don't mind.  I know you said in your organization, you've got how many North American locations?

JH:  8 plants in North America.

DG:  OK, 8 plants.  And you've, obviously, rolled out Rev 4.  How did you handle the transition?  How did it go?  What was complicated and difficult, and how did you address it?

JH:  For me, I think it's a little easier, because I was in the room while we were writing the 4th edition.  The heat treat systems for all of our locations, I wrote.  So, I have a very unfair advantage.  But, that being said, even knowing and being as intimate as I am with our own system and the 4th edition of CQI-9, we have made a concerted effort to slow down the process of doing the heat treat system assessment and slow down the process of doing the job audit and doing the process tables to ensure that we are capturing everything.

We've made this statement many times, whether it was here with you or if it was through our roll-out presentation, it is essential to read this document.  It is essential to understand what's happening in it.  If it takes just a little bit of extra time to read a little bit further to do the checks and balances, pop into the glossary, just to make sure that you are answering the questions as compliant as you possibly can, is the most important thing.

A wise man told me once, Compliance is a circle and if you're just outside the circle, all I want you to do is get you just inside the circle.  And next year I'm going to tighten the circle a little bit and if you're still sitting outside, we're going to move you inside.  You don't have to hit a bullseye every time, but you have to be inside the compliance circle.  So, if you understand that, and if you manage it that way, it's going to make it easy and more effective.  Then, you can stick to the intent of the document, and the intent of the document is within the acronym itself of CQI-9: it's continuous quality improvement.  Never take your foot off the pedal.

Source: Heat Treat Today

DG:  Right.  It never ends.  Justin, how about you?  Same question.  I know you're going in through your company into a variety of other companies who are trying to comply.  What are you seeing, from their perspective, as far as the difficulty?  How are they handling it?

JR:  I think the most difficult aspect of things, I guess, is probably one of the most obvious: implementation.  You've been doing it one way for the last 8-9 years and now we're going to need to implement something new.  And when do you want to implement something new?  It's really nice when you work for an organization that has process specifications and certain test specifications very well defined, because then you can hold onto them and say, “Here are the things that we were doing,” and you can go through them and see where things need to be different.

Where they're less defined, or they're defined in some manner that is not on the forefront of things – like I define things in a quote or in a purchase order – those become difficult. There could be elements of implementing something too soon, and now, all of a sudden, I violate something that they've done internally, or sometimes if they had it stated internally for a requirement.

For us, the most difficult thing has been the implementation side of things.  It's meant a lot of conversations and trying to determine what this is going to look like, what things we are going to need to do differently, what things we want to check on, and the finally to, for lack of a better word, “coach” my customer along.  Here are things you need to consider, here are things you might need to do differently, here's how I would state it for the new edition for making revisions.  But to the horse that has been thoroughly well beaten, you have to read the document.

The CQI-9 audio book, coming soon, we'll have that on tape for you.  Whether you're driving to work or putting your kids to sleep, it will work either way.

DG:  Last question for you guys.  For a company who's wanting to become CQI-9 compliant, what are some of those must do's and what are some of the practical advice you've got for them as they start down that path?

JH:  If, I may, I think the first and most important thing there is to evaluate the talent that you have on site.  Who is your in-house expert?  Who is the guy that most fits what you need to be the driver of those next steps?  As long as you have that, and that guy understands your system, then the journey can begin and I think your process is more linear with less hills and valleys.  You start to win, and you start to win with less drop-off, and that's what you want to do.  First and foremost, have the right guy in place.

[blockquote author="James Hawthorne" style="1"]First and foremost, have the right guy in place. [/blockquote]

DG:  So, in your estimation, James, you're saying it's a personnel issue.  Right away, make sure you do a good assessment and get the right guy in the spot to oversee the process.

JH:  Right.  You don't want to be a commercial heat treater and you just hired a quality manager from a widget factory to come be the champion of your heat treat.  You want him to be a heat treater.  You want to have a heat treater in place that knows his stuff.

DG:  Right.  And who has an attention to detail, I'm sure.

JH:  I think it's important to the extent of what Justin was just talking about is, when that person talks to his suppliers, his service providers, you want to have somebody that has some wherewithal and understanding in that field so when that communication does take place, and you have folks like Justin and others in his field, trying to help educate the heat treater on what it takes to be compliant with, whether it's reporting, whether it's through the process or whatever, having that understanding is going to make even the service provider’s job easier.

JR:  I think that organizations that struggled with the 3rd edition are probably going to continue to struggle with the 4th edition.  If you're comfortable with the 3rd edition and you're doing well with the 3rd edition, the 4th edition is going to be relatively easy to adapt to and to implement.  Like with any math story problem, you've got to write down what it is you know.  So you go through the document itself, you start making notes on things, you start citing where things might need to be different, you start red flagging things, you review what you have, may do a Ctrl + F for any mention of 3rd edition and replace with 4th edition, or something simple like that. It is what you have created and try to continue on with the successes you had for the 3rd edition into that 4th one.  If you've struggled with the 3rd edition, the likelihood that you're going to struggle with the 4th is also pretty great.  It is likely that the document isn't the issue, the issue is likely a lack of awareness.

It cannot go understated how valuable it is to invest in training, especially if you're bringing some new guy on to champion the effort, or if you've got a team that's eager and hungry and looking to prove their worth – get them trained.  It's readily available.  Our organization offers it, the AIG offers training on the HTSA side of things; there are plenty of organizations out there that will offer this training.  The benefits to working with a high-end service provider in many of these regards, is that they'll help you through the process as part of their service offering.  That's how the true value of a good service provider can be measured is in these sorts of situations.  I'd lean on your experts.  Invest in your staff.  Get the training to get everyone up to speed.

Again, if you fought it in the 3rd, and your plan is to fight it on the 4th, it's going to be an unenjoyable road and you might need to figure out ways to embrace what it is you know and acknowledge what it is you don't, and then fill those gaps in so that you can get to where you need to go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doug Glenn, Publisher, Heat Treat Today

Doug Glenn, Heat Treat Today publisher and Heat Treat Radio host.

To find other Heat Treat Radio episodes, go to www.heattreattoday.com/radio.

Heat Treat Radio #50: Justin Rydzewski and James Hawthorne on CQI-9 Rev.4 (Part 4 of 4) – Expert Advice Read More »