Foundrax Engineering Products

13 Quick Heat Treat News Chatter Items to Keep You Current

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT NEWS INDUSTRIES

Heat Treat Today offers News Chatter, a feature highlighting representative moves, transactions, and kudos from around the industry.

 

Equipment Chatter

  1. Foundrax Engineering Products Ltd, global Brinell test specialist, has launched the “BRINscope Duo”, a patent-pending, dual-illumination, hand-held microscope for measuring indentation diameters.
  2. TAV VACUUM FURNACES SPA received an order for a horizontal vacuum heat treatment furnace for a Brazilian company who specializes in different heat treatments (including quenching, cementation, nitriding) for the engineering industry.

Personnel/Company Chatter

  1. Mark Hemsath, former vice president of SECO/VACUUM Technologies LLC, is joining Nitrex’s Heat Treating Services Sales division. He will be taking on the role of vice president of Sales Heat Treating Services, Americas.
  2. Zachary Thomas will be assuming the role of outside sales manager at Solar Atmospheres of Western PA. He will be reporting directly to their sales director, Mike Johnson.
  3. AFC-Holcroft launched “AFC-Holcroft University,” a training program for all employees. This training offers their entire staff, including those in non-technical roles, the opportunity to learn more about the company, products, and technology.
  4. Ipsen is offering on-site Ipsen U courses to accommodate large groups at client facilities. Ipsen U is a course designed to teach heat treatment fundamentals, best practices and new methods.
  5. Rockford Systems, LLC, dba Rockford Combustion Solutions, is broadening its portfolio of offerings to include field service throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico.
  6. Throughput Consulting Inc., a leading Manufacturing Execution and Quality Management System software provider, hired Joe Coleman as its new cyber security officer to assist customers and their vendors in achieving compliance of NIST 800-171, CMMC and DFARS. He will be working with the Bluestreak™ team towards this end.

 

 

Kudos Chatter

  1. Nitrex launched their new website to reflect their company’s values and brand.
  2. Solar Atmospheres Greenville, SC facility has been awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne approval, their second aerospace prime approval of 2021.
  3. Berndorf AG, parent company to AFC-Holcroft, graduated its 2020/2021 class of its Berndorf Academy, an exclusive, yearlong management training offered to select employees chosen from the corporation’s global subsidiaries. AFC-Holcroft’s Jason Crook, electrical engineering manager, was one of the graduates.
  4. Newage Testing Instruments announced the launch of its new webshop, www.store.ametekstc.com to shop for hardness testing accessories such as test blocks, indenters, and anvils that can be used with both Newage’s products as well as other Rockwell, Brinell, Vickers, and Knoop hardness testing and microhardness testing systems.
  5. ECM Technologies was recognized as one of the companies who is leading the way towards a better, brighter, greener future. ECM’s ECO Furnace was presented the Green Business Award for accomplishing a cleaner, safer, and more efficient operation in the heat treat industry; more specifically the environment benefits from a low carbon footprint (energy consumption is minimal and CO2 emissions are near 80% less).

 

 

 

 

Heat Treat Today is pleased to join in the announcements of growth and achievement throughout the industry by highlighting them here on our News Chatter page. Please send any information you feel may be of interest to manufacturers with in-house heat treat departments especially in the aerospace, automotive, medical, and energy sectors to bethany@heattreattoday.com.

 

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Heat Treater Performs Brinell Hardness Testing with Precision for Primes

/ AEROSPACE HEAT TREAT, AEROSPACE HEAT TREAT NEWS, FEATURED NEWS, HARDNESS TESTERS TECHNICAL CONTENT

The largest subcontract heat treater of aluminum alloys in the UK, accredited to process components to Prime specifications, turned to a manufacturer of Brinell hardness testing machines to develop a more efficient testing process.

Foundrax BRINtronic automatic Brinell microscope

Alloy Heat Treatment (AHT), which serves the aerospace, automotive, energy, and other sectors, has a large number of prime customer approvals including Leonardo Helicopters, Airbus, Safran, Boeing, and BAE Systems. They are accredited to heat treat to these Prime’s specifications and often work as a trusted supplier to other companies that deal directly with them. Part of the Prime specifications dictates that Brinell hardness testing is carried out prior to releasing the components. AHT settled on the Foundrax BRINtronic automatic Brinell microscope, designed by Foundrax Engineering Products, based in Wessex, England.

“Part of the release process for aluminum alloys is that we must do conductivity and hardness testing on every job that leaves us,” said Steve Roberts, Quality Director with Alloy Heat Treatment. “As such we were looking at ways that we could gain efficiencies in this process. Using the BRINtronic from Foundrax has allowed us to gain these efficiencies.”

Brinell hardness measurements were required to be taken in areas of components where access is limited by intricate machine webbing or where the nose diameter of the microscope is restricted to approximately 30mm.

Alex Austin, Managing Director, Foundrax

“One of the problems we needed to solve with equipment selection is that the microscope must get into quite intricate places,” continued Roberts. “All the other microscopes we looked at have wide noses on them so, the design of the Foundrax scope was right up our street. We’ve used the manual Foundrax microscopes for as long as I’ve been here.”

“As the microscope automatically measures the indentation at multiple points, results are instant,” said Alex Austin, Managing Director of Foundrax. “They are recorded, and of course, the operator doesn’t have to turn the microscope 90 degrees and remeasure as he would with manual measurement. There is well over a 50% saving on measuring time.”

Foundrax BRINtronic display

“Obviously, the usability of the BRINtronic suited us,” said Roberts, “because we could get it into the places that we would struggle with using the competitor’s equipment. The process of measuring was far easier with the Foundrax BRINtronic as with the others we had to try and hold it with both hands and press buttons. They weren’t particularly well balanced either so in practice we were losing efficiencies rather than gaining them.”

 

 

 

Main photo caption: Steve Roberts of AHT uses the BRINtronic testing machine from Foundrax.

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