Dan McCurdy, President of Bodycote Automotive and General Industrial Heat Treating in North America and Asia
Bodycote, the world’s largest thermal processing services provider, announced today that it has acquired Nitrex Metal Technologies. Nitrex Metal Technologies specializes in precision gas nitriding and ferritic nitrocarburizing in both batch and continuous forms. Continuous gas nitriding and ferritic nitrocarburizing are unique in the industry and are particularly suited to high-volume automotive work. The addition of Nitrex Metal Technologies to the Bodycote Group broadens the range of thermal processing services that Bodycote offers, which already range from conventional atmosphere heat treatments like batch IQ, vacuum, and induction to more exotic specialty technologies like LPC, BoroCote®, and Corr-I-Dur®.
Dan McCurdy, President of Bodycote Automotive and General Industrial Heat Treating in North America and Asia, commented that “Nitrex Metal Technologies is a great addition to the Bodycote Group. Along with the rest of Bodycote’s existing service offerings, this acquisition really cements our position as the go-to expert source for all things nitriding”.
One of the great privileges of being the publisher of an industry publication is meeting many outstanding people. Some are exceptionally wealthy, some not. Some have a deeper degree of “outstandingness” in that they are kind and others-centered; others not so much. Due to the kindness of Ginny Smith, daughter of Hank Rowan, both of Inductotherm fame, I had the great honor of meeting Hank Rowan, the founder and former CEO of the Inductotherm Group of Companies. This short article is mostly about Mr. Rowan, although it is also about the people Mr. Rowan, I’m sure, would have championed.
My brief encounters with Mr. Rowan were two and both very brief. I’ll tell you more about my experiences with Mr. Rowan and his daughter, Mrs. Smith, below, but for now, you should take some time to listen to the excellent podcast that Malcolm Gladwell did about Hank Rowan shortly after Mr. Rowan’s passing in 2015. Fascinating.
Click here to be taken to the podcast that Mr. Gladwell did about Hank Rowan.
Mr. Rowan
Encounter #1. Not long into my publishing career with BNP Media (I was the publisher of Industrial Heating magazine from 1994-2014), I heard about Mr. Rowan’s book The Fire Within. Wanting to get a little better acquainted with the induction industry, I searched for the book. This was pre-Amazon days…or at least before I knew how to use it! Being a rather forward person, and not having any luck finding the book elsewhere, I called Inductotherm in Rancocas, NJ, to see if I could obtain a copy of the book from them. They answered the phone.
Receptionist: “Hello, Inductotherm, how can I help you?
Me: “Hi, my name is Doug Glenn and I was wondering if I could get a copy of Hank Rowan’s book from you?”
Receptionist: “Hold please.”
Next Voice: “Hello. This is Hank Rowan, how can I help you?”
Me: (Stone-dead silent…….) “Mr. Rowan! Nice to meet you….”
I went on to explain why I was calling and we had a nice discussion. Needless to say, I was surprised and appropriately impressed that Mr. Rowan took calls of this nature. He was a genuinely nice person. I got two copies of the book several days later with a short, hand-written note from Mr. Rowan.
Encounter #2. Multiple years later when I was making a sales call on Ginny Smith, Mr. Rowan’s daughter, who I mentioned earlier, I was about ready to leave and Mrs. Smith asked me if I’d like to meet her father. I was a bit surprised but, of course, said “yes.” We commenced to walk up the steps and directly into Mr. Rowan’s office. He had just completed some sort of minor surgery on his face and was slightly bandaged up…but still at work…and if I remember correctly still coming into work nearly every day even at the advanced age of 80+. His reception was warm and the three of us had a brief and pleasant conversation. No pretension; just a normal guy…as was his daughter, Ginny. I, of course, recounted the book request incident to him (not knowing what else to talk about) and he didn’t act surprised.
Some exceptionally wealthy people are aloof. Not Mr. Rowan.
Other Industry Champions
I’m going to step out and speculate a bit here because I did not know Mr. Rowan well enough to say what I’m about to say emphatically…I could be wrong, but I think Mr. Rowan would probably champion the not-so-rich-and-famous people in the heat treat industry. People like Dan Reardon of Paulo Products with whom I’ve had the privilege of developing an online relationship (!). Dan and I have corresponded by LinkedIn only. I’ve never met him in person. Nonetheless, I consider Dan to be an industry (and life) champion. I think Mr. Rowan would as well.
If you’ve listened to the Malcolm Gladwell podcast (see above), you know that Mr. Rowan donated millions of dollars to educate the every-day engineers in and around his New Jersey home. It would be hard to say how many educational lives Mr. Rowan has impacted.
Mr. Reardon, on the other hand, father of five, is, as I am, struggling to get our kids (Dan has 5, I have 4) through college. Based on the LinkedIn exchanges Dan and I have had, it is easy to conclude that Dan is not independently wealthy. By his own admission, it is a “struggle” to know how he and his wife are going to do it — how are they going to put all the kids through college and still have a half decent retirement. My guess is that if Dan had to choose, he’d sacrifice his retirement for the benefit of his kids. Go Dan!
These are the types of people that make the heat treat industry tick. There are undoubtedly thousands of others that could be mentioned. Malcolm Gladwell doesn’t have time to profile them all; nor do I, but please know that each and every one of you that sacrifices himself for the good of others is a champion.
PT Krakatau Steel, Indonesia, has placed a turnkey order with SMS group for the supply of a high-performance hot strip mill. The order comprises the entire process equipment, ranging from the slab yard to the coil yard, the electrical and automation systems, the auxiliary facilities such as water management, roll shop and crane systems, and the construction of the pertaining infrastructure and bays. Planning and execution of building construction and civil engineering is carried out by the Indonesian consortium member, PT Krakatau Engineering.The hot strip mill is scheduled for commissioning in early 2019 in Cilegon on the Indonesian island of Java. This is where PT Krakatau Steel (PTKS) operates an integrated steel plant for which SMS group had supplied a hot strip mill, among other equipment, in the 1980s.The new hot strip mill for strips with a maximum width of 1,650 mm will have a capacity of 1.5 million t/a in its first expansion stage. Key components are a reheating furnace, a four-high reversing roughing stand with edger, the six-stand finishing mill, a laminar strip cooling section, a universal coiler and the coil transfer system. At a later stage, the annual production can be increased to up to 4 million t/a.
The hot strip mill is equipped with numerous technology packages and Ecoplants components required for the economic manufacture of high-quality hot strip. Thanks to the utilization of low-emission burners, the walking beam furnace achieves low pollutant values, which are monitored constantly via an online system. The four-high reversing roughing stand operates with the technology for camber-free rolling, which enables the avoidance of strip camber due to temperature or thickness rundowns. The temperature losses in the transfer bar are reduced by newly developed and highly efficient heat retention hoods between the roughing stand and the crop shear.
The finishing stands are equipped with the CVC plus system (Continuously Variable Crown) with integrated work roll bending and hydraulic roll-gap adjustment systems, enabling strips to be produced with very close thickness, profile, contour and flatness tolerances. The Ecoplants components in the finishing mill include the Sieflex HT high-performance spindles, the design of which allows the transmission of higher rolling torques with smaller work roll diameters. A further innovation is a highly efficient two-stage work-roll cooling system, operating with various pressure stages.
SMS supplies the entire plant automation, the drive technology and the electrical power distribution. On Level 0, this equipment comprises the sensor technology, the technological measuring devices, the main and auxiliary drives, as well as switchgear units and compensation equipment. The Level 1 automation systems are designed completely on the basis of the most up-to-date embedded technology, involving an efficient and, at the same time, lean hardware design.
The innovative operating concept X-Pact vision is designed according to state-of-the-art ergonomic knowledge and enables the operator to act intuitively to achieve optimum process control. The Level 2 process automation contains the technological process models, ranging from the pass schedule calculation PSC (Pass Schedule Calculation) via the profile, contour and flatness model PCFC (Profile Contour Flatness Control) up to the cooling section model CSC (Cooling Section Control) and temperature control. Likewise, SMS supplies a microstructure model MPM (Material Property Model), which determines the mechanical properties of the products and supports and simplifies the introduction of new materials.
Within the framework of Industry 4.0, a powerful PQA (Product Quality Analyzer) system will continuously monitor all process and product quality parameters. The new hot rolling mill will be one of the most modern facilities of this type worldwide, enabling PTKS to fulfill highest demands regarding quality, productivity, and production cost.
Can-Eng Furnaces International Limited has been contracted to design, manufacture and commission a rotary furnace system for the heating and hot working of titanium and alloy billets and preformed shapes for Weber Metals Inc. of Paramount, California – Long Beach Facility. Weber Metals is a subsidiary of Otto Fuchs KG of Meinerzhagen, Germany, and an operating unit of the Otto Fuchs Aerospace Group.This large diameter rotary furnace is a part of Weber Metals’ 60,000-t press expansion project. The 60,000-t press will allow Weber Metals to manufacture larger and lighter forgings utilizing more advanced materials and will incorporate the latest in green technology to reduce waste, energy consumption and increase efficiency. The new facility will house the largest aerospace forging press in the Americas making some of the world’s largest monolithic forging components.
Holland, NY: One of North America’s leading high-temperature radiant tube manufacturers, INEX Incorporated, recently completed a three-phase building expansion nearly doubling the companies footprint in Holland, New York, 30 miles southeast of Buffalo. According to Mike Kasprzyk, president and owner of INEX, “we’re now able to meet the growing needs of our expanding customer base.”
The expansion included additional production, engineering, and shipping/receiving floor space as well as the addition of new manufacturing equipment and technologies to meet consistently increasing demand. The company’s high-temperature silicon/silicon-carbide (Si/SiC) radiant tubes are one alternative to conventional all-metal radiant tubes and tend to have long life cycles and a higher BTU output per square inch than traditional all-metal radiant tubes.
For more on this expansion, listen to an audio interview with Mike Kasprzyk conducted by Heat Treat Today publisher DougGlenn by clicking here.
Why has it proven so difficult for other philanthropists to follow Hank Rowan’s lead?
In the early ’90s, Hank Rowan gave $100 million to a university in New Jersey, an act of extraordinary generosity that helped launch the greatest explosion in educational philanthropy since the days of Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefellers. But Rowan gave his money to Glassboro State University, a tiny, almost bankrupt school in South Jersey, while almost all of the philanthropists who followed his lead made their donations to elite schools such as Harvard and Yale. Why did no one follow Rowan’s example?
“My Little Hundred Million” is the third part of Revisionist History’s educational miniseries. It looks at the hidden ideologies behind giving and how a strange set of ideas has hijacked educational philanthropy.
The heat treatment of automotive components, made of aluminium alloys, has become a main focus point over the past years within the automotive industry. Increased strength and overall improved properties are ever more frequently targeted, so that material- and weight saving requirements can be accomplished. A fully automated – high capacity T6 – heat treatment line, which is in full compliance with today’s requirements of the automotive industry, will be introduced in the following.
To meet Schafer Gear Works’ growing demand for high-precision commercial aviation shafts and gears, the company recently moved its Fort Wayne, Ind., operations to its larger production facility in South Bend, Ind. “Acquisition of new, state-of-the-art equipment at our South Bend plant and the ability to better leverage our gear manufacturing expertise led to the transfer,” said Paresh Shah, operations manager for the South Bend facility. The transition was seamless and the plant now produces precision-critical shafts and small-diameter gears with tolerances to 0.0004” and microfinishes to 16 RMS.
Shah said moving the small-diameter gear production 90 miles west to Schafer Gear Works South Bend will improve design and manufacturing efficiencies as well as customer support. By centralizing the facility’s small- and medium-diameter gear engineering, production and quality control expertise, the company is expanding its presence in the aerospace and automotive industries as well as with medical instruments, light and heavy industrial products, recreation vehicles, and material handling companies. Its efforts to reduce tool costs and downtime keep pricing competitive and delivery among the fastest in the gear-making industry. Because of the South Bend facility’s continuous equipment improvements and stringent quality standards, it has earned ISO 9001-2008 and AS9100 certification.
Schafer Gear Works manufactures one of the widest ranges of custom-engineered, precision-cut gears for off-highway markets. In addition to the small-diameter gears and precision components, the South Bend plant produces 1.5- to 10-inch diameter spur, internal and helical gears as well as shafts.
Ipsen recently installed both atmosphere and vacuum heat-treating systems at SKF’s state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in St. Louis, Missouri. With the relocation of their existing facility to a new location, SKF continues to focus on enhancing the quality, efficiency and overall effectiveness of their heat-treating equipment. Among this new Ipsen equipment was a complete ATLAS atmosphere heat-treating system, including two ATLAS integral quench batch furnaces and ancillary equipment – washer, temper, endo generator, loader/unloader and a feed-in/feed-out station. SKF also purchased a TITAN® vacuum heat-treating system to round out their production capabilities.
Heat-treating is considered a core competency at SKF, and this new equipment will allow them to bring the majority of heat treatment in-house and efficiently handle the increase they’ve seen in production demands and volume of parts. Reflecting on the equipment purchased and what appealed to SKF, Bryan Stanford said, “Initially, I would say it was the general purposefulness of these Ipsen products that appealed to us. We run a very large variety of parts and batch quantities here. A custom solution designed to run tens of thousands of the same parts was not going to work for us. We wanted a low-cost, off-the-shelf-type solution that would allow us the flexibility we required – which is what the ATLAS and TITAN delivered. Now after having performed some pre-training, I would say what stands out the most is the ease of use and control of the equipment.”
The ATLAS batch furnaces feature a 24″ W x 36″ D x 30″ H (610 mm x 910 mm x 760 mm) load size with an 1,100-pound (500 kg) load capacity. They also operate at temperatures of 1,400 °F to 1,800 °F (750 °C to 980 °C) and have a quench oil capacity of 1,030 gallons (3,900 L). The TITAN vacuum furnace features an 18″ W x 24″ D x 18″ H (455 mm x 610 mm x 455 mm) load size with a 1,000-pound (454 kg) load capacity. It operates at temperatures of 1,000 °F to 2,400 °F (538 °C to 1,316 °C). Overall, this Ipsen equipment will be used for carburizing, carbonitriding, brazing and annealing and will process a wide variety of parts that support SKF’s Lubrication Business Unit.
To meet Schafer Gear Works’ growing demand for high-precision commercial aviation shafts and gears, the company recently moved its Fort Wayne, Ind., operations to its larger production facility in South Bend, Ind. “Acquisition of new, state-of-the-art equipment at our South Bend plant and the ability to better leverage our gear manufacturing expertise led to the transfer,” said Paresh Shah, operations manager for the South Bend facility. The transition was seamless and the plant now produces precision-critical shafts and small-diameter gears with tolerances to 0.0004” and microfinishes to 16 RMS.