Within any heat treating operation, quality drives everything, including quotes, contract review, and overall production. The #1 influences on quality are the technical specifications: the ones designed by the AMEC Committee in aerospace; the Nadcap checklist heat treaters must audit; and CQI-9 specifications in the automotive industry, which are overseen by AIAG. There are also major influences from ASTM in hardness testing and ISO 9000 and AS 9100 in quality department operations.
Needless to say, there are a plethora of specifications, data, and information required in the quality department to operate a heat treat plant. Sometimes it can seem impossible to keep up with all of the changes.
This is where the Metal Treating Institute’s Technical Standards Committee becomes so valuable to any heat treat plant. The MTI Technical Standards Committee was established during the MTI’s Winter Strategic Planning Committee meeting in 2015. After plentiful discussion on challenges facing heat treaters, the leadership felt heat treaters needed to be involved in the specification groups, giving them a voice in the design of the specifications and keeping them updated as specifications were being reviewed or changed.
The committee is now made up of 25 people from commercial heat treaters and suppliers. The committee meets three to four times a year to discuss all the specifications and audit checklists under review or issues needing improved. The committee thus determines any actions steps needed to make sure specifications maintain high levels of quality and safety without becoming onerous or cost prohibitive.
From each of the committee meetings, five to six key leaders on the committee provide a full report on each technical standard group’s activity via a virtual Zoom meeting. The volunteer work and member reports on committee activities have become very valuable to quality departments by giving real time information on potential changes in specifications that could have a big impact on equipment purchases or overall quality process for audits.
Many of the specifications the MTI Technical Standards Committee has covered over the last seven years include AMS2759 (and all the slash specs), pyrometry with AMS2750, CQI-9 in the automotive industry, and hardness testing specs with ASTM.
In the MTI Technical Standards Committee, heat treaters have the power to fi nd out the full details of specifications as they are reviewed prior to approval — not when the auditor shows up at audit time. Volunteering for one of these committee groups like AMEC, Nadcap, ASTM or CQI-9 includes getting to be part of the spec writing process and influencing what the final specification requires.
MTI would like to say thank you to the co-chairs of the MTI Technical Standards Committee: Ed Engelhard from Solar Atmospheres and Bob Ferry from FPM Heat Treating for providing to the industry their leadership of this very important committee. MTI would also like to thank the following companies for supporting their quality team’s involvement in the committee:
• Applied Thermal Technologies, Inc.
• Aremac Heat Treating East, LLC
• Cincinnati Steel Treating
• Continental Heat Treating, Inc.
• Euclid Heat Treating, Co.
• Gasbarre Thermal Processing Systems
• Ipsen
• King Tester
• Midwest Thermal-Vac
• Pacifi c Metallurgical, Inc.
• Paulo Products
• Peters’ Heat Treating, Inc.
• Pinson Valley Heat Treating
• Southwest Metal Treating Corp.
• Super Systems Inc.
• ThermTech
• Throughput | Bluestreak
• Winston Heat Treating
If you have any questions or would like more information on MTI's Technical Standards Committee, feel free to contact Tom Morrison at tom@heattreat.net
Find heat treating products and services when you search on Heat Treat Buyers Guide.com
