Heat Treat Today publishes twelve print magazines a year and included in each is a letter from the editor. This letter is from the June 2026 Sixth Annual Buyers Guide Issue print edition. In today’s letter, Bethany Leone, managing editor at Heat Treat Today, shares her insights on why a print directory still earns its place in an engineer’s toolkit.
The physical act of flipping pages, folding corners, and marking up listings creates a kind of accidental learning that a search bar can’t replicate. And the guide serves everyone differently — metallurgists, maintenance managers, and newcomers still learning the industry’s vocabulary all get something different out of it.
I’m a fold-the-spine-backwards kind of person. Chaotic annotate-at-an-angle kind of researcher. Audiobooks were designed to protect documents from people like me. But full immersion is sometimes the only way to really use information designed to help you learn or answer a question.
While the other issues in this magazine contain a slew of articles and stories to inspire and teach North American heat treaters about their equipment and processes, this issue is the industry directory. Its process-driven structure is designed to make the directory a practical next step for engineers and decision-makers evaluating their options.
A central use is finding out “who’s who” even before you need to call an equipment supplier or process provider. This can easily be done online at www.heattreatbuyersguide.com too, but in print, comparison becomes physical. Your eyes move faster than tabs open. A folded page, a pen mark, and a highlighted listing become part of the evaluation process itself.
Additionally, it is a tool to learn what’s outside your primary area of expertise. Search bars are excellent for finding answers to questions you already know to ask. Directories are different. They expose adjacent technologies, unfamiliar process names, and companies you may not have encountered otherwise. This accidental learning is hard to replicate online.
For an in-house heat treat operation mainly focused on annealing processes for steel grades but looking to enhance hardness profiles, Heat Treat Buyers Guide introduces you to the range of equipment, processes, and suppliers involved. Mark these, circle the companies, or leave a half page fold for your future self when it comes time to make a process improvement decision. While some sections may not matter today, a new alloy, distortion issue, or throughput challenge makes those folded corners and handwritten notes the starting point of the next improvement project.
The wide reach of this tool is critical for heat treating, a process dependent on an interconnected network of specialties. At my last trade show, an engineer who had transitioned from aerospace into furnace manufacturing told me, “Surprisingly complex! I had not anticipated all that goes into engineering a furnace. It is very different than aerospace, and not at all simple.” Every process step has its own expertise, from fixturing, atmosphere control, and quenching to testing, software, and beyond.
The table of contents provides the main equipment categories with color tabs that replicate on the pages of the corresponding sections. Be sure to check out the final few tabs which indicate listings for commercial heat treaters and a few leading consultants in the heat treat industry closer to the end.
The most representative categories to page through include:
- Aluminum Heat Treating
- Annealing
- Hardening, Quench & Temper
- Vacuum Heat Treating
- Induction Hardening
- Solution Treating & Precipitation Hardening
In line with new heat treat technology developments are increasingly represented categories around vacuum:
- Vacuum Furnaces
- Vacuum Carburizing
- High-Pressure Gas Quench
- Vacuum Hardening
- Vacuum Brazing
The guide serves different purposes depending on who opens it. A metallurgist may use it to identify process capabilities. A maintenance manager may use it to source replacement systems or atmosphere components. A young engineer may simply use it to learn the vocabulary of the industry.
Whether you keep yours tidy and pages well-thumbed or take the closest sharpie to mark your next hit list, use this directory to better understand your options within the North American heat treat industry.
Managing Editor
Heat Treat Today
Contact: Bethany Leone at bethany@heattreattoday.com
