MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT

What Are the Real Threats to the Economy?

op-edIs the sky falling? Are we all doomed? Are we on the cusp of stagflation or hyper-inflation? Is this the beginning of the worst recession since the 1930s? The short answer is no.

Chris Kuehl, PhD, managing director of Armada and economic analyst at Industrial Heating Equipment Association, explains why the future may not be all doom and gloom. Read on to discover a positive outlook on the economy in this original content piece, originally published in the June 2022 Heat Treat Buyers Guide print edition.


Chris Kuehl
Managing Director, Armada, Economic Analyst, IHEA

The frothy coverage of the economy has been an exercise in extremes and one has to wonder why. Especially when we look at the actual data. The signals that are being sent are not all that dire. This is not to say that there are no problems to be aware of and there are most definitely some impending threats, but the near hysteria that shows up almost hourly is not justified by the facts — at least not as they are emerging right now. Why do some economists present these extremely pessimistic assessments and assert that a major catastrophe lies ahead?

The truth is that economists are not all that good at forecasting and predicting despite the fact this is supposed to be our job. The reality is that we have predicted 13 of the last three recessions. The comparisons between an economist and a meteorologist are not flattering but both professions have the same challenge. The data changes and it changes fast. The real purpose of the dire economic forecast is to warn. It is essentially pointing out that the economy is headed for a brick wall unless something changes. The prediction of a major recession in 2030 or 2035 or 2050 is nothing more than a call to action. If the issues that are affecting the economy are not dealt with, the likely outcome will indeed be the recession or other economic calamity that has been forecasted.

The predictions of doom and gloom are designed to call attention to major issues that demand attention sooner rather than later. All are driving the negative performance of the current economy. None of these will be easy to deal with and failure to either prepare for the impact or find a way to avert the disaster will indeed mean the economy could be headed for strains that will significantly hamper growth.

At the top of the list is the supply chain. It is safe to assume that the old system will never return. The breakdown in globalization has been due to everything from geopolitical tension to the desire on the part of companies to have better control of their processes. It is estimated that there will be a trillion dollars of reshoring in the U.S. this year alone. Nearly 70% of those doing business in China want to shift significant production to the U.S. or at least to North America. Robotics and technology allow companies in the U.S. and Europe to compete with those low production cost platforms in other countries. Despite these moves, China and other nations provide trillions of dollars of goods to the U.S. and the rest of the world which means that the reshoring effort will not eliminate the importation of material from China and elsewhere, but the dependence that has developed on the Chinese export sector will diminish. Along with the effort to bring production back to the U.S., there will be diversification when it comes to these overseas sources. There will be expansion to other Asian states such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia and there will be efforts to expand to more Latin markets such as Colombia and Brazil. Even states in Africa such as Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya will see efforts to expand. It is important to note that all these nations provide opportunities but also challenges.

The next challenge is connected to both the labor issue and the supply chain. Companies that struggle to find the people they want to hire will turn increasingly to automation and robotics. This has already occurred in the manufacturing sector as machines have largely replaced the people who once worked on the line in the factories. Now the automation revolution has reached the service sector with developments such as online buying, self-serve retail, and complete conversion to consumer driven interactions. The need for the labor that once dominated the service sector has largely diminished. The technology demands a higher-level worker, and those people are in even shorter supply than other skilled workers. The future is one of cobots — people interacting with and working alongside machines that have the ability to do their own problem solving. It is the robot and technology revolution that has spurred so much of the reshoring effort as the machines allow U.S. companies to compete with the low wage and low production cost operations overseas.

About the Author: Chris Kuehl is the managing director of Armada and an economic analyst for IHEA. Over the last 21 years, Chris has worked with many private clients and professional associates. He writes a bi-weekly publication for Fabrinomics on the impact of economic trends for manufacturers. Among other advanced degrees, Chris has a doctorate in Political Economics and is a well-known keynote speaker, giving nearly 100 presentations a year.


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Endogas Generator Increases Efficiency for OWZ Ostalb

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Daniel Panny
Product Manager
UPC-Marathon in Germany
Source: LinkedIn

OWZ Ostalb received a new electrically heated endothermic gas generator. The company wanted to replace the old generator since it had no automatic process control and was unable to control the dew point efficiency in situations where the ambient air changed too much. The old components, which were difficult to replace, further reduced the generator’s overall efficiency.

OWZ Ostalb, a commercial heat treatment company in Aalen, Germany, received the EndoFlex™ S from UPC-Marathon, a Nitrex business unit, in late 2021.

"The customer chose us," says Daniel Panny, product manager at UPC-Marathon in Germany, "because we offered [a] gas mixing and control system, the EndoInjector™, and the [. . .] ReactionCore™ multi-retort system to deliver a reliable, on-demand supply of quality endogas, resulting in significant CO2 savings for their heat-treating operations."

The EndoFlex™ S that was purchased is the electrically heated version with an air cooler, an automatic nitrogen purge system, and additional CH4 monitoring to meet the highest safety standards.


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What Does It Mean To “Heat Treat Green”?

OCWhat does it mean to "heat treat green"? Between the hype and the cynicism of abilities of "green solutions" to meet climate concerns, there is a robust conversation going on about the real world effects of heat treat technologies and heat treat innovations. In this Technical Tuesday, we'll examine three topics that have been paramount in the discussion over the course of the past year and a half.

If you'd like to read more robust original content from Heat Treat Today, subscribe to the Heat Treat Daily here. Or, if you have a technical article you'd like to share with the North American heat treat industry, contact our editors at editor@heattreattoday.com.   


Heat Treating Equipment: Furnaces and Induction Heating

Recently, Solar Atmospheres demonstrated how their new vacuum oil quench furnace is both efficient and safe as well as a "green" alternative to other VOQ methods. Additionally, talk of the greenness of the induction heating process continues to be highly vocalized due to the repeatable and electric method of heating components. Compare these two heat treating equipment technologies below:

Vacuum Oil Quench

"Solar Atmospheres of Western PA announced their newly designed vacuum oil quench furnace (VOQ) has passed startup protocol. There were zero flare and smoke-ups during the quench cycle and the transfer mechanism moved 2000 pound loads with no issues."

Read more: "Western PA Heat Treat Facility VOQ Passes Startup Protocol"

Induction Heating

"Induction heating is a fast, efficient, precise, repeatable, non-contact method for heating metals or other electrically conductive materials."

Read more: "Why Induction Heating Is a Green Technology"

Renewable Energy Combustion

Using renewables in the combustion arena of heat treating is a complex topic: real energy used, efficiency, costs, and time to adjust all factor into the discussion. While there still doesn't seem to be one solution to this problem, individuals and companies are drawing lines in the sand to help them make equipment investment decisions for their heat treat operations now.

Overview of the "Renewables" Question

"Using a broad spectrum of green energy sources, likely generated in a decentralized manner, and with regional focus on infrastructure capabilities such as transportation and storage of energy carriers, seems more plausible than focusing purely on an electricity-based energy system."

Read more: "Future of Heat Treat: Renewable Energy"

Energy Expert Weighs In

"But there is really no easy path to replacing the efficiency, both thermodynamic efficiency and economic efficiency, of high temperature heat (flames) — that’s the nature of processing materials. So then, you’re only option is the current affection for “green hydrogen.” This is a profoundly misplaced aspiration."

Read more: "Heat Treat Radio: Energy’s Bright Future with Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute"

Related: Steel Manufacturing With Hydrogen

Water vapor instead of CO2. A huge part of steelmaking is retrieving the pure iron itself in a blast furnace. But this traditional method of getting iron into its usable form requires a lot of heat and a lot of energy. Alternative options that companies are wrestling with are using electric arc furnace (EAF) mills and replacing CO2 with hydrogen. This is a "fringe" conversation to heat treaters, but it is still relevant as downstream manufacturers engineers.

CO2: BOF and EAF Furnaces

"There are a few shifts that need to happen. We must move away from blast furnace steel making. Every product based on that will create huge amounts of CO2. Electric arc furnace (EAF) mills are running the world."

Read more: "Going Carbon Free: An Interview with H2 Green Steel"

HYBRIT Use of Direct Reduction

"Around 71 per cent of steel produced today comes from an iron-ore-based method. This typically uses a blast furnace at temperatures of around 1,500°C in which carbon, usually coal, is used to remove oxygen and impurities from the ore to make pig iron. The latter is then turned into steel via a basic oxygen furnace whereby oxygen is blown onto the liquid iron to burn unwanted elements."

Read more: "Fringe Friday: Making Steel 'Green'"

New Technology vs. Practical Solutions

"At Cliffs, we don’t want to rely on breakthrough technologies, but rather deal with practical decarbonization options. Our efforts involve the use of the hydrogen contained in natural gas, which is actually a mix of 95% CH4 and 4% C2H6."

Read more: "Green American Steel: The Envy of the World with CEO Lourenco Goncalves"


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Heat Treating in Red, White, and Blue

OCIndependence Day is right around the corner, and Heat Treat Today wanted to share some red, white, and blue processes from across the heat treating industry. We're highlighting induction hardening, gas nitriding, and hydrogen generation. Curious? Get ready for Independence Day with this red, white, and blue Technical Tuesday.


Red Hot Basics: Induction Hardening: Understanding the Basics

Induction hardening in action
Photo Credit: Contour Hardening

"The induction coil is a copper conductor that is shaped in order to harden the specified area of the part. The current that flows through the coil is what produces the magnetic field, which in turn heats the part. Coils are typically part specific, since they need to be precisely constructed to heat a particular portion of the part."


White Layer Cases in Gas Nitriding: Elevate Your Knowledge: 5 Need-to-Know Case Hardening Processes

White layer from nitriding
Photo Credit: SECO/VACUUM

Gas nitriding is a valuable case hardening process. In gas nitriding, a white layer made up of a nitrogen-rich compound is formed. This white layer is hard and wear-resistant, but is also very brittle.

"This compound layer depth is dependent on processing time. In the more traditional two-stage process, the case depth produces a gradient of hardness from surface to core that commonly ranges from 0.010-0.025”, with minimal white layer, typically between 0-0.0005”."


Blue Water Gas: On-Site Hydrogen Generation: A Viable Option for Reducing Atmospheres in Heat Treating

Water and electricity: that's all the materials that are needed to generate hydrogen on site. Water electrolyzers for hydrogen generation are compact, portable, and reliable, as well as being safer than storing gases. Could the future of heat treating — and perhaps the end of natural gas — be "blue"? Now, unless you live on the beach in the Bahamas, the water you're used to probably isn't blue, but you catch our drift.

"Electricity and water come into a plant in pipes and wires and are highly reliable. Additionally, there are no hydrogen storage tanks taking up a large amount of unusable space."


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Heat Treat Radio #76: Lunch & Learn with Heat Treat Today – Mill Processes and Production, Part 1

Heat Treat Radio host, Doug Glenn, and several other Heat Treat Today team members sit down with long-time industry expert Dan Herring, The Heat Treat Doctor®, to talk about simplified mill practices and processes as they relate to aluminum and steel. Enjoy this second informative Lunch & Learn with the Heat Treat Today team. 

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


 


The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Dan Herring (DH):  It’s my pleasure to be here and what I’m going to attempt to do in about the next 30-40 minutes is take about 3 or 4,000 pages of literature and condense it down into some simple English and some common sense, if you will.

We will talk about mill practices, production methods, and what I like to call the forms produced. We might call this whole thing “simplified” for lack of a better terminology, if that makes sense. I’ve selected two very common materials to talk about. The first one is aluminum and the second is steel. But I’m going to disguise that a little bit and talk a  little about aluminum and iron. Just to recall, maybe our high school chemistry, aluminum (or aluminium as it’s called by the rest of the world), has chemical symbol Al and iron has chemical symbol Fe. You might wonder how we got Fe from iron: it’s from the Latin word ferrum. Aluminium is another story which I’ll leave for another time, but it is quite interesting.

If we’re going to talk about aluminum and if we’re going to talk about iron, why isn’t steel an element? That’s a question I get very often. Steel is actually an alloy. That’s a combination of different elements. The way I like to think about steel is it’s iron and manganese and carbon and some other alloying elements put in that make specific types of steel that are used for specific applications and application purposes.

Watch or listen to the first episode in this series

The other common question I get is you’ve heard of terms in history like “the stone age” where all the tools and, by the way, the weapons were made of stone. Similarly, the stone age gave way to something called “the bronze age.” That’s where an alloy of copper and tin came on. Again, it made better tools and, by the way, better weapons than the stone tools were. Then, later, you probably heard that there was something called “the iron age”, and we all commonly have heard these terms, but why haven’t we heard about “the steel age”? That’s a common question. What is the steel age? Why isn’t it an age, if you will? That’s because we came up with a very fancy term: The Industrial Revolution, where we started to use steel as an engineering material. I don’t want to get too off subject here, but thought I’d mention that.

So, we begin with raw material, and we call that within the industry an ore. Now, most raw material is in the form of ore or minerals that are found in nature, and they’re typically the element of interest (aluminum or iron in this case) combined with possibly some undesirable elements. The ore that we get from the raw material that we get from the earth has to be refined to make it into a metal. And there are certain raw materials (gold is a good example), that are found in its pure state. I which I could have found more of it in my career, then I wouldn’t be talking to you, but that’s a different story! The idea here is the fact that most ores come in the form of, or most minerals are found in nature and have to be refined.

[blockquote author="Dan Herring, The Heat Treat Doctor®" style="1"][The] chemical bond between aluminum and oxygen is very strong. As a result of that, we need a lot of energy to break that bond apart, to produce aluminum the metal and oxygen the byproduct. A lot of energy is required for that[/blockquote]

The principal ore containing aluminum is something we call bauxite. Bauxite is aluminum oxide, chemical symbol Al203. The way I like to think of bauxite is bauxite is dirt. We can put a dress on it, but it’s still dirt at the end of the day. It’s a special type of dirt. It’s a dirt that has 40-60% aluminum oxide in it. And there are certain areas in the world where bauxite is more common than others. Interestingly enough, Australia is a tremendous source of bauxite as is Africa. That’s why you find the majority of bauxite mines in either Australia or Africa or other places in the world.

When you get into iron, there are two principal ores — there are hematite and magnetite. They are iron oxides and they’re obviously rich in iron.

But to begin, let’s deal with aluminum and what the mill has to do, or what the aluminum manufacturing process really is. We start off, as I said, with dirt, with the raw ore. We then get fancy, and we crush it into a very coarse powder and then after we’ve crushed it, we want to refine it — we want to take and remove some of the impurities. So, we mix it with a little of what we call caustic soda, which is sodium hydroxide, and lime, which is calcium oxide or calcium carbonate, and we use that refining method to purify the raw ore. What we wind up with, interestingly enough, is a very fine white powder which is called alumina or aluminum oxide.

We start out the manufacturing process with a raw material that is a very, very fine powder that is almost all (principally 99%) aluminum oxide. We take it and we put it into a furnace, and we heat it. We do that process with electricity because we’re using carbon anodes, if you will, placed into the bath that we pass current through to melt the aluminum. The process therefore is extremely energy intensive. That’s why you find aluminum production plants in areas like the Tennessee valley, where we have a lot of hydroelectric power. You find them in Iceland, where you have a lot of geothermal energy to help produce electricity. But they’re very electrically intensive operations.

The scientific reason for that is that the chemical bond between aluminum and oxygen is very strong. As a result of that, we need a lot of energy to break that bond apart, to produce aluminum the metal and oxygen the byproduct. A lot of energy is required for that.

You might also find it interesting that when the process was first developed back in the 1880s, and it took that long to produce pure aluminum — if I remember right, the year was 1883 — but the price of an ounce of aluminum was more expensive than the price of an ounce of gold just because of the manufacturing of it.

But anyway, we’ve taken this aluminum powder, which is a white powder, we’ve melted it into a silvery-colored metal, and we do that inside a furnace. Then we tap the furnace — in other words, we pour out the molten aluminum and we either produce cast products from the aluminum or we produce what are called ingots for subsequent working. We either make castings directly or we make ingots.

Cast products, examples of them, might be engine blocks, wheel rims for automobiles, even some small appliances (there are toasters that are cast), patio furniture, tools, cookware — a lot of things wind up just as cast products.

But if we’ve produced an ingot, now we have various methods that we take to produce an engineered product, if you will. We can extrude the aluminum — in other words, we can take an aluminum ingot and we can put it in a press and press it into a form and we can make things like aluminum ladders, bicycle frames, even certain airframe components, out of extruded material. We can take these ingots and we can roll them — we can roll them hot, or we can roll them cold — this is called hot rolling and cold rolling.

But we can turn around and when we roll it, we can make sheet, we can make plate, we can make something that we’re all very familiar with which is aluminum foil. We can make wire, heat exchangers, panels for automobiles, and battery components. Again, in the transportation industry, we can make a lot of things for automobiles or airplanes.

Similarly, we can also forge the material. We hot forge it in this particular case, but we can make various rings and blocks and cylinders and sleeves and components that we can then take and machine.

The process of manufacturing aluminum is relatively straightforward, and it winds up, as I said, with an ingot of some type that is then manufactured into a product.

Doug Glenn (DG): I want to jump in with two thoughts:

You’re talking about that the manufacturing of aluminum from raw materials is highly energy intense. Two points on that: One, it’s much more energy intense than steel production, for one thing, and secondly, that makes some sense of why it is we do so much recycling (or at least try to) of aluminum, because it’s a lot cheaper to take already formed aluminum (an aluminum can or an aluminum wheel off a car) and melt it down. The amount of energy to do that is a lot less than it is to create aluminum from scratch. That was one thing, Dan, if you want to comment on that.

The second thing is you were talking about extruding. I imagine that most everyone knows what that is. You were talking about pressing it into a form. You’ve got to remember that with an extrusion, you’re pressing it through a dye. It’s kind of like your playdough that you push in that form, and you get a shape coming out the other end — that’s extrusion, and not to be confused with forging where you’re putting it into a closed thing and pressing it into a form.

DH:  Those are both very, very good comments. Interestingly enough, when you get into iron and steel making, the minerals, the iron oxides if you will, are far easier to break the bond between iron and oxygen than it is between aluminum and oxygen. That’s why the aluminum is such an energy intensive process.

And absolutely correct — recycling saves a tremendous amount of cost and is something that is vital to the long-term success of aluminum because an aluminum product, in general, is more expensive than a steel product.

You are correct — when you extrude something, you basically squeeze it through a dye, if you will. We’ll talk about that a little bit more in forging.

I want everyone to understand that when we start to talk about iron and steel making, because the process has been around for such a long time, there are certain terms that are used in the manufacturing process that have become synonymous with the process itself. Once again, we start out with an iron oxide, a mineral in the form of magnetite or hematite. We take that raw ore and we put it into something called a blast furnace. This is where we do a process called “smelting” of the material. We form a metal by taking and reducing the ore in the presence of air under pressure.

Source: Historic Pittsburgh

Coming out of the blast furnace is molten metal, molten iron, if you will. Now, historically, it’s called “pig iron.” The reason for that is when they originally cast different molds with shapes, the resulting structure looked like a litter of piglets that were actually suckling on their mother. So, the term “pig iron” came about. These little “pigs,” if you will, were broken off from the main casting. As I said, there are a lot of historical things going on.

In the old days, you then took the pig iron and you put it into what is called either a BOF (basic oxygen furnace) or an EAF (electric arc furnace) and then you remelted the pigs, if you will. But today, in most of the BOF and EAF processes, you wind up charging a hot liquid iron into those furnaces. They heated up, or continued to heat up, and then you turn around after you’ve converted the pig iron (which is about 94% iron and 6% impurities, so it’s still very impure) and with processing in a BOF or EAF furnace, you get the impurity levels down to less than 1%.

You might say to yourself, “Why is that important?” The idea in steel making is to take the raw material — the iron — and take everything out of it, so we can precisely add back in just those chemical elements that we want to make a particular type of steel. That’s essentially what the BOF or EOF is doing it; it’s converting the molten metal (or the pig iron) into a very, very pure material.

We then do a process which is called “tapping.” We transfer the raw material into a ladle furnace and inside the ladle is where we do the remainder of the refining process. What we wind up doing is we purify the material — we get rid of the additional impurities that are present, anything from hydrogen and oxygen and excess nitrogen to tramp elements and things of this nature. So, in the ladle, we do the refining. This can be done in a vacuum process, a vacuum degassing process, it can be done with an argon process, if you will. But we go from the blast furnace to the refining furnace (the BOF or the EAF), we then go into the ladle and what we’re doing is we’re taking the raw material and we’re making a purer and purer and purer form of, first of all, iron, and then we’re starting to add in elements that we want to make a particular grade of steel or type of steel. Then we’re going to do a process called “teeming” and “casting.” Teeming is basically pouring the molten metal into molds.

Source: BHP

What we wind up with is we have a process where we have liquid steel and we’re going to send it into either something called a continuous caster, we’re going to make ingots out of it, or we’re going to take and atomize the steel. I want to talk about atomizing the liquid steel first. The process is done by adding a gas such as nitrogen or argon or even air, or by using water, but the idea here is that what you wind up with is a powder metal.

By the way, it’s called “powder” metallurgy not “powdered” metallurgy. Powdered is cookies, but powder is what we produce from the atomizing process. The powder can either be spherical in nature or it can be rounded or even irregular-shaped, depending on the type of atomization process. But we take this liquid stream of metal, and we impinge it with either water or gas and burst it or break it apart into particles. Then we do a simple process which is called screening of those particles — it’s basically taking and getting finer and finer, or dividing the powder into finer and finer powders.

Depending on the purification of the powder, how fine the powder is, we use it for what we call conventional powder metallurgy, so we take and use it for basic sintering operations, for example. You’re all familiar with the rearview mirror on your automobile. Interestingly enough, the rearview mirror fits into something called a mirror mount, and that mirror mount is a powder metal part. It happens to be a stainless steel, but it’s a powder metal part.

The idea is the fact that we can have a conventional powder metal. We can have (if we use finer powder) a metal that is suitable for metal injection molding for making things like firearm components, orthodontic braces and things of this nature, or other medical-type devices. Or, if we get a superfine powder, we can turn around and we can use it for something called additive manufacturing.

We’ll talk a little bit more about these later, but from the casting process, we can either go into a continuous caster, we can make ingots, or we can atomize the liquid steel.

If we go into a continuous caster, we’re cooling down the steel and we’re producing three products — they’re called blooms, billets, and bars. Basically, the difference between them is their physical shape. A billet might only be 10 inches square or something of this size (10 x 10 x 10 inches). A bloom is defined as something that is less than one hundred square inches, typically, except if it’s a jumbo bloom caster which makes bigger blooms, but we’ll ignore that as it gets complicated quickly.

The idea here is the fact that we’re either going to take the liquid steel, we’re going to cool it down in some continuous fashion or we’re going to put it into a mold to make an ingot or we’re going to atomize it using water or a gas to make a powder. Those are the three forms that come out of this whole process.

DG:  Dan, I’ve got a quick question for you on that:  With the aluminum, you mentioned that you can melt it and then cast it directly into a finished product (a cast product). Do we do that much with steel? Do we often take steel and actually take it directly into an alternator casing or some other finished part?

DH:  Absolutely. There is a lot of cast steel that is used. The example that comes quickly to mind are probably valve bodies that are used in the petrochemical industry and things. If you think about the iron side, you’re very familiar with cast iron skillets and cast iron cookware. You can also have steel castings as cookware, but you typically don’t as it’s more expensive. But yes, you can make a variety of products directly as a casting.

As I said, you can make powder metallurgy products, and you can also make a family of products that we then call wrought products. What we do is we take those billets, blooms, and bars and then we either hot work them or cold work them to make various types of materials. We can roll them, we can pierce them, we can forge them. We can make sheet, we can make plate, we can make bar and tubular products, we can make wire, we can make strip. A good example is the fact that if you’re a razor blade manufacturer, you want to order material from the mill that’s in the form of strip, thin strip actually.

If, on the other hand, you’re in the oil and gas industry, and if you’re ordering pipe or tubing for use, as we call it, “down hole”, obviously it does no good to have delivered a strip of steel or a sheet of steel or a plate of steel, you want something obviously in the form a tube or a pipe that can then be used.

For more information:

www.heat-treat-doctor.com

dherring@heat-treat-doctor.com

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.

 

 


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Heat Treat Radio #76: Lunch & Learn with Heat Treat Today – Mill Processes and Production, Part 1 Read More »

Heat Treat Fabrication Provider Acquires Certain Assets From Performance Industrial Products

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On June 16, 2022, a heat resistant high alloy casting and fabrication company headquartered in Avilla, Indiana acquired certain assets of Performance Industrial Products, LLC (PIP), a dynamic heat resistance high alloy foundry located in Waupaca, Wisconsin.

"We are excited to add PIP’s casting expertise to our American-based centrifugal and no-bake sand casting capabilities," said Chad Wright, president of WIRCO, Inc. "PIP’s expertise and capacity [. . .] greatly increases our ability to supply the growing demand for highly engineered tubular and sand-based castings."

"We are thrilled to be a part of the WIRCO team," added Chris Robbins, president of PIP. He continues that his company looks forward to  "We look forward to contributing to their already exceptional reputation in supplying high quality domestic made heat resistant castings and fabrications to the thermal processing industries."

Pictured Above (From Left to Right): Aaron Fisher -Vice President Wirco, Chad Haines – Sales Manager Wirco, Chris and Betsy Robbins PIP, Chad Wright – President Wirco
Source: WIRCO

The WIRCO family of companies is headquartered in Avilla, Indiana and is now comprised of three Indiana manufacturing centers along with foundry operations in Champaign, Illinois and Waupaca, Wisconsin.


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Diagnosing Discolored Work in Vacuum Heat Treating

Source: VAC AERO International, Inc.

Part discoloration after vacuum heat treating? What can heat treaters do to prevent this? In this best of the web, Q&A-style article, witness the heat treating industry gather around to exchange ideas and find a solution to the problem. Part position, backfill gas level, contaminated quench gas, or an air leak could all be to blame in this Technical Tuesday.

Dan Herring weighs in on the issue as well. To read The Heat Treat Doctor's® diagnosis, click the link below. Learn how the color and position of the discoloration give clues as to the source of the problem.

An excerpt:

"So, what else could be happening? Let The Doctor add a few thoughts to the discussion. First, the fact that the discoloration (staining) is brown in coloration suggests that the oxide is forming on the part surface during cooling when the temperature is in the range of (approximate) 245ºC – 270ºC (475ºF – 520ºF). This is supported by the fact that the oxidation does not occur “during natural cooling” (which we assume to mean cooling under vacuum). Second, the fact that the discoloration is more evident at the bottom of the load suggests the phenomenon is (gas exposure) time dependent, that is, the longer the parts take to cool through the critical range, the greater the chance for discoloration."

Read more: Discolored Work in a Vacuum Furnace – The Heat Treat Community Answers the Clarion Call


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News From Abroad: Heat Treat Investments, Management, and Anniversaries

Heat Treat Today is partnering with heat processing, a Vulkan-Verlag GmbH publication that serves mostly the European and Asian heat treat markets. Together, we are sharing the latest news, tech tips, and cutting-edge articles that will serve our audience — manufacturers with in-house heat treat.

In the June 2022 Heat Treat Buyers Guide print edition, we looked to our European information partner to hear about captive heat treaters investing in new equipment, furnace manufacturers shifting management, and heat treaters celebrating big anniversaries.


French Captive Heat Treater Invests in Screw Press

"At its location in the French town of Châteubriant on the Atlantic coast, the agricultural equipment manufacturer Kuhn develops and manufactures, amongst other things, tillage equipment, plows, and sowing machines. From the very start, Kuhn Huard has had an undeniable competitive advantage thanks to its forging and heat treatment know-how."

Read More: "Kuhn Orders Screw Press by Schuler"

 

Shifting Management for Global Player in Heat Treatment

"[Dr. Peter Schobesberger’s] place as CEO of AICHELIN Holding GmbH will be taken by Dipl.-Ing. Christian Grosspointner. He is a trained industrial engineer with a wide range of experience in the management of manufacturing companies in the mechanical and plant engineering industry as well as in metal processing."

Read More: "Aichelin Announces Change in Holding Management"

 

Celebrating Decades of Serving Heat Treaters with Burner Technology

"Since its foundation in 1992, NOXMAT has stood for state-of-the-art burner systems, which are developed, manufactured, and produced in Oederan. Research and Development thus play an especially important role. At the in-house ‘Technikum,’ technological innovations are developed and tested for marketability."

Read More: "NOXMAT Is Celebrating Its 30-Year Anniversary"


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This Week in Heat Treat Social Media


Welcome to Heat Treat Today's This Week in Heat Treat Social Media. You know and we know: there is too much content available on the web, and it’s next to impossible to sift through all of the articles and posts that flood our inboxes and notifications on a daily basis. So, Heat Treat Today is here to bring you a hot take of the latest compelling, inspiring, and entertaining heat treat chatter from the world of social media.

This week we'll check out some heat treating topics that are close to home (maybe even in your kitchen!) as well as learn about a metal that's a national security concern. 

If you have content that everyone has to see, please send the link to editor@heattreattoday.com.


1.  Sharp Facts on Heat Treating Knives

You may have used a knife to cut your steak last night, but what's the story behind that crisp, clean edge? Check out this video to learn the basics of heat treating knives.

 


2.  Kudos to Past 40 Under 40 Winners!

Mastering the Subject

Alberto Ramirez, Contour Hardening, was excited to share a big milestone: a master's in Information Technology Management. We're proud to have him in the 40 Under 40 Class of 2021.

Heather Falcone, CEO, Thermal-Vac Technology, "Transformational Woman"

This month, social media was a-buzz with news from Family Business Magazine. Heather Falcone, CEO of Thermal-Vac Technology, was named as one of the "Transformational Women." This 2019 40 Under 40 winner sure has a knack for collecting awards.

Speaking Candidly

Mark Rhoa, vice president at Chiz Bros, delivered a talk on thermal performance in furnaces with refractory and insulation products at the ASM 2021 heat treat show.


3.  A Triad of Trending Topics

Precious metals in your pocket, an exciting future in heat treating careers, and a new VOQ in Western PA? It's going to be a good weekend. 

What's Going On in Your Phone?

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

.VOQ Maiden Voyage Coming Soon

 


4. The Reading Corner

Doing a little personal development this weekend? Why not increase your heat treating knowledge by perusing these articles?

Graphene, the Wonder Material That Became a National Security Concern

Listen to the Future of Furnace Compliance

Learn about furnace compliance that fits in your pocket with this episode of Heat Treat Radio

Heat Treat Radio: Reimagining Furnace Compliance with C3 Data's Matt Wright: Click to –> Watch | Listen | Learn

 


5. Get McDonald's Delivered to Your Heat Treat Shop

With this smoke alarm, a bit of smoke in your heat treat shop might not be all bad. Anyone else want to install it right above your furnace?

Have a great weekend!


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How To Make $17,792.00 in a Couple of Hours

op-edWe will explore the ever-popular subject of how to make money the easy way. Well, better stated: How to save some money, but at the end of the year the result is the same.

This column is a Combustion Corner feature written by John Clarke, technical director at Helios Electric Corporation, and appeared in June 2022 Heat Treat Buyers Guide print edition.

If you have suggestions for savings opportunities you’d like John to explore for future columns, please email Karen@heattreattoday.com.


John B. Clarke
Technical Director
Helios Electric Corporation
Source: Helios Electric Corporation

For our discussions, we will assume that we are operating a continuous heat treat furnace that processes work at 1600°F. The furnace currently consumes 2,000 SCFH of 1000 BTU/SCF natural gas and operates 8,000 hours per year. With today’s natural gas at 8.00 USD per 1 mmBTU (1 mmBTU = 1,000 SCF of natural gas), our furnace’s annual operating cost is:

Using our trusty combustion analyzer that provides a readout of the oxygen present in the flue products, we quickly determine the fuel contains 6% O2 (measured by volume, dry basis). The “volume/dry basis” is the most common value measured by handheld combustion analyzers. We measure the temperature of the flue products at 1700°F. Our burner and/or furnace specifications say the system should be operated at 3% O2. How much can we save by adjusting the burner(s) on this furnace?

Table 1 below provides savings numbers that result when non-recuperated burners are returned to 3% O2.

If we read where the exhaust temperature row intersects with our column for our starting O2 volume in the flue products, we see the resultant savings will be 13.9%:

 

 

We chose 3% O2 in the flue products (around 15% excess air) because radiant tubes and direct fired systems can commonly operate at this level with little CO or soot generation. A simple combustion analyzer can be purchased for a few thousand dollars and the labor required to make these adjustments is generally under a day. The payback period for this maintenance investment is measured in weeks, even if it requires the purchase of new tools.

There may be an added benefit we receive when adjusting the furnace. We may have an opportunity to increase the throughput, so perhaps production can be increased while fuel costs are reduced.

Table 1 can be used for other specific conditions, so keep it handy. Next month, we will explore the savings resulting from recuperation or pre-heating the air.

Recuperation projects are more complicated and require greater investments, but they are becoming increasingly critical for heat treaters working to stay competitive in our new reality of dramatically higher natural gas prices.

About the Author:

John Clarke, with over 30 years in the heat processing area, is currently the technical director of Helios Corporation. John’s work includes system efficiency analysis, burner design as well as burner management systems. John was a former president of the Industrial Heating Equipment Association and vice president at Maxon Corporation.


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