An Iowa-based heat treat company providing thermal processing and metallurgical solutions for multiple industries, including aerospace, energy, and automotive, recently announced breaking ground on a 15,000 sq ft new addition, which will include two new heat treating equipment installations.

This is the first expansion at the corporate headquarters at Advanced Heat Treat Corp. (AHT) since 1998. The new addition will allow AHT to segregate its trademark processes, UltraGlow® (ion nitriding/nitrocarburizing) and UltraOx® (gaseous ferritic nitriding/nitrocarburizing and oxidation treatments) and maintain its state of the art manufacturing feel and presence.

The new expansion will bring with it two new gaseous ferritic nitriding/nitrocarburzing units w/sizes up to 13’ tall and 5’ wide. The new additions will be twofold:

• the larger unit (13’ x 5’) will allow AHT to grow its longer-like product line, for processing long plastic injection screws for the plastics industry, hydraulic cylinder rods for the agriculture and/or construction industry lines and various pump, motor, shaft components for the oil and energy industries, and
• the smaller unit (4’ x 5’) will be designed to capture more of the aerospace product line market; this unit will be targeted to be Nadcap approved by late 2018 to early 2019. By doing so, AHT will then have two Nadcap-approved processes inside its walls: Ion Nitriding and Gaseous Nitriding.

“This expansion will allow us better control of product flow, inventory control and process capacity,” said William Cowell, vice president of Ion Nitriding and plant manager. “We’ll be nearly doubling our gaseous nitriding capacity  with these additional units, and with the floor space, we’ll be able to better accommodate our customer demands.”

AHT currently has 55 ion/gaseous nitriding units across its four locations in Waterloo, Iowa; Monroe, Michigan; and Cullman, Alabama.

“I’m excited on many counts. One, we’re adding capacity/backup to an already growing agriculture/construction market. Two, we’re targeting to add a new Nadcap process in order to expand further into the aerospace market and meet more of our aerospace customer demands and requests. And three, we’re gearing up to go even bigger in 2019: with the expansion, we’ve planned to build/design a gaseous unit that will process parts up to twenty feet. This unit will allow us to enter various markets for growth,” said Mikel Woods, president of AHT.