Heat Treat Radio #119: Solvent vs. Aqueous Cleaning: Choosing the Best Method for Your Process

March 20, 2025 / HEAT TREAT RADIO, Manufacturing Heat Treat Technical Content, PARTS CLEANING TECHNICAL-CONTENT

In this Heat Treat Radio episode, host Doug Glenn sits down with Fernando Carminholi, the business development manager at Hubbard-Hall, to discuss solvent and aqueous cleaners and why cleaning is a crucial step in both pre and post thermal processing to ensure quality part outcomes. Fernando offers practical guidance, discusses solvent vs. aqueous cleaning methods, common pitfalls, and upcoming EPA regulations that could impact the industry.

From production to engineering to quality, there are valuable insights for everyone on optimizing cleaning process for better part quality, longer furnace life, and maintaining compliance in the latest regulatory environment.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

HTT · Heat Treat Radio #119: Solvent vs. Aqueous Cleaning: Choosing the Best Method for Your Process

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Doug Glenn: Welcome to Heat Treat Radio. I would like to start off with some parts cleaning basics. Do all parts need to be heat treated? Why do we do cleaning? And what are the risks of not cleaning?

General Parts Cleaning (01:40)

Fernando Carminholi: Thank you for this opportunity to talk about cleaners and the importance of cleaning. We’re going to focus on the cleaning before the heat treat, but there is also a cleaner after the heat treat when you remove quenching agents.

You asked how to know if parts need to be cleaned. And my answer to that is “yes,” and it could be “maybe” as well. The “maybe” is because some really light oily parts with light oil go to the furnace and there is not a problem. I would say that maybe 10% of all the parts heat treated do not need cleaned in any kind of operation. They go from stamping or deep drawing straight to the furnace.

But the rest — the 90% — will require cleaning. And that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today.

Approximately 30%–35% will pass through a solvent cleaning. When we’re talking about solvent cleaning, there are two different ways to clean parts. One is the well-known technology of open-top degreasers. You have your solvent in a proper tank, and then you have some chillers on top to hold the vapor; this is called a “vapor degreaser.” You see a lot of these machines on the market from the 80s and 90s.

Another way to use solvents is in a closed vacuum machine, which is a more technologically updated machine.

And the rest of parts, I would say more than 50%, are cleaned in water-based cleaners, which could be in a spray application, a spiral tunnel, or immersion.

And normally, what kind of oils do we clean? As the years go on, there are new regulations for the oils with all the modernization. Every year the R&Ds work with new kinds of oils — cooling fluids, rust inhibitors, forming lubricants, and deep drawing compounds. Plus, they could be synthetic, and every year the oils become more difficult to remove. That’s the big challenge for the cleaning operation.

Doug Glenn: I assume the solvents must keep up with the changes in the chemistry of the cleaners?

Fernando Carminholi: Sure. Both of the systems have to keep up: the solvents and the aqueous.

Doug Glenn: If I’m hearing you right, Fernando, you’re saying that probably 90% of parts in in the heat treat process are cleaned. Maybe 35% of those get solvent-based cleaning and the rest aqueous-based.

I’ve heard that there are various reasons why we clean. Obviously if you’re going into a vacuum furnace, there are different reasons for why you clean than if you’re going into an air and atmosphere furnace. You’re wanting to make sure you don’t drag all those contaminants into a vacuum furnace. That’s one reason why you clean, right?

Fernando Carminholi: Exactly. But most will be more atmospheric furnaces. And then what do you drag in? Most of the clients we’re talking about move high volumes inside the furnace.

Let’s think about it in two different ways. If you don’t clean at all, or you have a bad cleaning, what is the problem? If you don’t have a cleaner at all because it’s a really light, clean oil and part that doesn’t drag that much oil, it could be fine.

But let’s think about a big operation with lots of oil, maybe fasteners or a kind of part that carries more oil to the furnace; it will produce a lot of drag and it will burn. You will have furnace contamination that will contaminate the oxygen and the carbon — it can cause decarbonization which can affect the hardness and the mechanical properties of the parts. The easiest way to see that this is happening is if there is a lot of smoke, which is common.

Fasteners that may carry more oil to the furnace

Doug Glenn: It is common. And one thought I had is not only will it potentially affect the parts, but it can impact the life of your furnace because you’re getting a lot of contamination, it’s going to need more maintenance, and you can damage your furnace.

Fernando Carminholi: Definitely. It will need more maintenance and shorten the life of the furnace. The smoke can also cause an uneven heat distribution inside the furnace and can lead to warping, cracks, and inconsistent hardness on the part. And that’s the result of no cleaning at all.

Now look at it another way. If you have the cleaner, machine-cleaning solvents or water based, and somehow you’re not cleaning the parts well, you can drag more than oil to the furnace. You can drag other compounds. With water-based cleaners in particular, you can drag the rinses together with all the chemicals.

And you have a different areas, like in nitriding or FNC operations, where the area with the oil that was not cleaned well will suffer some soft spots and unformed hardness — like the opposite of using sunscreen on the beach. You can cause surface defects like heating stains and areas that are well heat treated as well as areas where the structure is not as expected.

Doug Glenn: It’s almost like unintentionally using a stop-off paint on your part.

I want people who may not have dealt with parts cleaning in the past to hear some of these things: Not all parts need cleaned. A good number of parts do. If oil on the surface, or contamination, or spottiness on the finish of the part is not an issue, then you may not need to wash. But a very large percentage of parts that are heat treated do get washed in either solvents or aqueous-based, water-based solvents. And it’s good for the life of your furnace, the interior furnace, the maintenance of your furnace, and the properties of the parts.

Legislation (11:40)

I want to move on to a second topic that I thought would be very enlightening to some of our more experienced parts cleaning people. That is the area of legislation that Hubbard-Hall is aware of that’s going to be coming down the pike that we need to be aware of. Can you talk a little bit about the legislation regarding parts cleaning?

Fernando Carminholi: When we’re talking about legislation, everything that the EPA stated, let’s separate again into two different topics: water based and solvent based. When we’re talking about water-based cleaners, you have to watch out for what kind of raw materials you’re using.

What is the cleaner formulation? Because if you don’t rinse well, that’s something that you need to control in your process. If you don’t rinse well, you’re going to be dragging a lot of those materials. That can cause all the problems that we’ve already talked about. But legislation for water-based cleaners is less problematic.

I would like to wave a red flag right now because if you’re working with some product that will be restricted, you need to change.

And then, for example, you have some restrictions with some surfactants. And it’s based, but, for example, none of the latest. All those new formulations, I would say that they’re already free of.

Another big topic to discuss, and something that everyone is talking about now, is products containing PFAS. It could be in both a water-based cleaner and in the solvent.

Doug Glenn: What are those two things that you mentioned?

Fernando Carminholi: PFAS are fluorinated compounds. You see a lot of these in Teflon based, fire extinguisher foam, and in a lot of different things in the industry. These are forever chemicals. So far there is not a good, stable way to treat and eliminate these chemicals from the drinking water. This is something that the industry is regulating: how to treat and how to waste those chemicals because some of those compounds.

We’re talking about PPT (part per trillion); it’s a really low amount in the drinking water. But this is something to watch out for on the chemicals. This is something that is already suffering restriction, and it’s a hot topic.

Doug Glenn: Are these rules that are coming down federally based or are they state based?

Fernando Carminholi: These are federal. If you look up PFAS, all the surface finishing world and the wastewater world is talking about them. If you look at Congress, a lot of regulations from the government are talking about maybe having different states with different numbers. This is something that is already defining the rules and defining how to analyze and how to treat it.

Hubbard-Hall already does PFAS-free manufacturing. We decided not to work in this way.

I would like to switch gears a little bit here. With regulations, normally we talk more about the solvents. The solvents we’re talking about — methylene chloride, TCE (trichloroethylene), perchloroethylene, propyl mide — are the halogenated solvents that are already on the list. The EPA is working on this already.

I have a cheat sheet with some numbers I would like to bring up. If you go on the Hubbard-Hall website, you can find this table. To create this chart, we took all the regulations and put them in one table for different solvents. When the EPA rule was stated, for example, methylene chloride is already finishing. The rule was dated March 2024. All companies have until March 2026 to stop using this solvent as a cleaner.

There are exceptions. For example, if you use them for NASA or federal use, you have a little bit more time. For TCE, you have less than one year; by January 2026th, you’re not going to be able to use TCE as a vapor degreaser.

There are some alternatives for that. If you’re using an open-top machine, fluorinated solvents are an alternative; they have low global warming potential and are non-flammable, stable products. Those are available on the market.

Another alternative is modified alcohol, which is the best choice. This is a formulated alcohol. It’s not a book solvent. It’s a formulated product. It has a good cleaning ability and a good permeability because that’s the beauty of the solvent. It can go between the parts or inside the holes to clean everything. And modified alcohols can be used in the vacuum cleaning machine. It will work almost the same as the vacuum furnace. But on the cleaning side you have all the equipment running in a vacuum and you have a distillation process that will remove oil and the water from the part.

Doug Glenn: I’m curious about that chart that we were looking at. As you know, most of our readers and listeners are manufacturers who have their own in-house heat treating and we get a lot of commercial heat treaters, too. But our core audience are those manufacturers who have their own in-house heat treat. How many of them do you think are using either solvent or water-based solutions that are going to be ruled out by these regulations?

Fernando Carminholi: I would say that today 20% use halogenated solvents that need to be ruled out and switched for another technology. In some states, such as New York and Minnesota, this is already in place. They cannot use them. But the final date rule to be enacted, for example, for TCE would be January of 2026.

The unique one that is just proposed but is not finalized yet is the NPB. I think that will take between 3–5 years to be fully restricted.

Doug Glenn: It seems safe to say that there’s a significant number of people out there currently using cleaning solvents that will be outlawed over the next 3–5 years, so they need to start looking for another technology?

Fernando Carminholi: I would like to wave a red flag right now because if you’re working with some product that will be restricted, you need to change. Or use the same equipment. But as I told you, the fluorinated solvent would be 3–4 times more expensive.

On the other hand, if you’re going to buy equipment to use modified alcohol, there are not that many equipment manufacturers and that’s the limit. If 20% of this market needs to change, they will expect to change six months before. I would say that today you have equipment manufacturing expecting to deliver equipment in six months.

Doug Glenn: People need to keep in mind the lead time that they’re not going to get that equipment that quickly.

Aqueous Based vs. Solvent Cleaners (25:07)

Doug Glenn: Let’s jump in and talk about the pros and cons of using aqueous (or water-based) versus solvent cleaners. What’s the difference and why would we choose one over the other?

Fernando Carminholi: This is a really extensive debate. You can see some videos at the Hubbard-Hall website talking about this. What I see in the market is that companies selling only solvent will always talk poorly about the water-based. Companies that sell only water-based products are talking bad about the solvents and regulations.

I would say that Hubbard-Hall plays on both sides. We understand the best usage for different applications. I would try to go on the really high level. “Hey, I am the solvent side; I need to keep on the solvent side.” Or, “I need to go for a water based.”

First of all, you need to understand the contamination. What kind of oil? We’re talking about the cooling fluid, rust inhibitor, dip drawing, a lot of heavy, chlorinated oil, whether it contains sulfur, or whether it is a polar or nonpolar-based — that would decide what kind of solvent or water-based product you’re going to use. Normally, when you have an oil-based hydrocarbon, it tends to be easier to remove with solvents. When you have a water-based cooling agent or rust inhibitor, that’s easier to remove with a water base. This is one thing to consider, but it doesn’t mean that if you have a hydrocarbon you cannot remove it with water.

A discussion about waste and cost of parts cleaning

Another thing that you need to take a look at is the part geometry. If it is a flat part, it’s easy to remove oils with a spray. Or you may need ultrasonics to remove oils if there are a lot of blind holes and parts really close to each other. That’s an advantage of going to the solvents here because even if you use a really good surfactant, which will change the surface tension, the solvent tends to have a much better permeability — that’s the term for cleaning the really deep holes and the parts really close to each other.

Another thing to consider is I would call overall the EHS. That means what is the company? Is it okay to use inside the factory? Do I need VOCs? Do I need aqueous to be VOC free? For solvents you need to check how flammable they are.

Waste in Cleaning (29:07)

When we’re talking about waste and footprint — what is the difference between the systems? The footprint for solvent is smaller because all you need is the degreaser machine, open top or vacuum cleaner. You clean and you dry. Normally, the drying process is way easier with the solvent.

Plus, you don’t have all the other processes needed for the water based. All the waste generated from the solvent that you have is possibly some water that came from the water-based rust inhibitor or even the oil or some cleaner that is already gone. You have this weighed and then you send for a partner that will pick it up and take care of the waste.

For aqueous, this is different. You will need rinses. You will need a temperature to dry. You need blowers; you need heaters. The o-rings [ET1] may be needed to dry the parts, and that’s a problem. If you leave the water behind, it can lead to corrosion, for example. So that’s a big difference between solvent and water-based.

Doug Glenn: The reason the solvent is not an issue so much with the drag out, where you keep part of the cleaning solution on the products, is because of evaporation? Solvents evaporate much quicker than water.

Fernando Carminholi: Yes, that’s right. That’s why old open-top vapor machines could be a problem because the EPA [MS2] [JM3] tightens limits every year. When you have an old machine with chillers on the top, you have the vapor phase, which is when you heat up your solvent. And then you have the chillers, which is the coil to condensate back. If the chiller is not working well, the solvency will go to the atmosphere. At the end, when you take out your part, it will dry up really easily. When you go for the closed system, you don’t have this emission.

That is another big difference between solvent and water-based. When you have a machine based on the solvent, you feel the machine. Normally, we’re talking about five to ten drums of product, and the consumption is really low. Clients spend one drum every 2 or 3 months for solvent depending on the system. For aqueous, you need all the rinses. So every time that you run a load, you go through the rinse, and you drag solution out of your tank, so the consumption will be higher for water based.

The Cost Debate (33:07)

Doug Glenn: So as far as variable cost, your aqueous system might have a higher operational cost?

Fernando Carminholi: That’s another good debate. The operational costs need to include the equipment as well.

Doug Glenn: I was going to ask about the difference between capital equipment costs. You said the solvent is a smaller footprint, does that mean it is a lower price?

Fernando Carminholi: Yes, I would say for the aqueous, if you need to include ultrasonic, for example, because you need an invasive way to use the waves to clean the parts, it will increase the cost. However, normally the cycles for the water based are lower. You can produce more parts.

No clear winner here when talking about cost

For example, if you were cleaning parts in a plant that already has a wastewater system, you will need to treat the water (possibly 1 to 2 gallons per minute depending on the flow rate on the rinses). This water needs to be treated before it is dumped into the sewage. You also need to follow the regulations and the limits.

But the cost overall depends on the parts. If we start to talk about cost, there’s a big difference now. Not that long ago, before Covid, water used to be cheap. But now water is very expensive. Energy is very expensive. Waste is very, very, very expensive. Then if you take all this rework, it is unacceptable. We like to say, cleaners can be cheap, but poor cleaning is always expensive.

The cleaning process will be cheaper than the heat treated part or even the steel or grinding or blasting. If you take the overall cost, cleaning is nothing. But if you don’t do the best that you can do, it can cause a huge problem, and that’s one thing to keep in mind.

Doug Glenn: Product failure, most notably. The more critical the part, the more important to make sure it’s cleaned.

Is it safe to say there’s no clear winner here when we talk about cost of equipment versus cost of operation for aqueous or solvent?

Fernando Carminholi: It really depends on the parts, the level of cleanliness that you want, and the kind of oil you’re using.

If you have a part that cannot be cleaned with aqueous because there’s a lot of holes and you need to clean inside the holes or the parts are close together, then there is no comparison. But you can bring up a lot of factors and put them side-by-side.

Solvent could be more expensive because of the chemical consumption, but for aqueous you need more equipment. When you’re talking about a vacuum cleaning machine, it will be a substantial capital expense for the equipment — over $1 million.

I’m seeing equipment manufacturers for the vacuum washing machine. They’re looking at the market and they see the problem of the mix of oils and cooling and you can use what they call a hybrid system. On the same machine you can use water-based fluid and then go to the solvent fluid. That’s a new feature in the market.

Doug Glenn: That’s very interesting. It’s a hybrid piece of equipment that starts with an aqueous wash and then finishes up maybe with a solvent washer?

Fernando Carminholi: Exactly.

Cleaning and the Environment (39:03)

Doug Glenn: Let’s move on to the fourth and final topic. I want to wrap up this third thing that we’re talking about as far as the pros and cons of aqueous versus solvent. If a listener has questions about which system makes the most sense for them, I’m sure your team at Hubbard-Hall can help them answer that question.

Fernando Carminholi: The best way to evaluate is to get a picture of your situation. We look at your costs, the pros and cons that you have today, your timeline for changing, whether you’re solvent regulated, for example.

We can do a scenario on how much you’re going to spend on the new line if you need a new line. We do have a prototype line where we can run some tests, different cleaners or solvent, or open-top machine. We can run different scenarios, evaluate the costs, and find a more environmentally friendly solution.

Doug Glenn: The last question I do want to ask you is about the cleaning process. How do we make it more efficient, profitable, and environmentally friendly?

Fernando Carminholi: The chemical manufacturers look it up in different ways. Let’s start with the solvent. Like I told you, there are a few. It’s a really low drag out. But it is dependent on the solvent, especially talking about modified alcohol. All the oil that you bring on the part could contain product that would change the pH of the chemical, and it could go really acidic or it could go really alkaline. That will screw up your machine; that will attack your parts. So, you lost the solution. You can have problems with the seal casket. You can attack the parts if you go acidic.

There are some ways to extend the life, and then you can analyze the solvent. You can add some stabilizers to continuously use the same solution because this is a fairly new technology. About ten years ago, the chemical manufacturers developed way better stabilizers to handle these new kinds of oil that we mentioned to extend the shelf life or the life of the solvent as much as we can. That’s a big savings.

On the aqueous side, what can be done? The problem here is why you dump your process. It’s because oil as well. Hubbard-Hall does work with a feature that’s a piece of equipment that is a membrane filtration. We built this equipment internally. We have sold it to many clients already. This technology has been on the market for 40 years; it’s well tested. This technology filters the oil out of the cleaner to extend the life of the cleaner.

I will give one example. We have a client with parts that are brake calipers. They need to dump the cleaners every 2–3 weeks. That’s a cost to put chemicals is a cost to treat. With the membrane filtration, it’s been more than five years without dumping the solution.

We understand that it recovers like 98% of the cleaner in the future oil that you don’t need. This changes the cost a lot. That’s why there are a lot of variables that we can put on the equation. That’s why I ask listeners with this problem that if you’re looking for the solution, we’re more than happy to jump in and evaluate one system or another and compare costs for what you have.

Doug Glenn: Does that membrane filtration system you’re talking about work on both solvent and water based?

Fernando Carminholi: No, normally the solvent has the distillation process to separate the solvent, the water, and the oil.

The main drain will work only on the water based and when you use product that will emulsify the oil. And emulsifying means the cleaner is able to mix the oil and the water like you see in milk when you have 2% of fat.

Doug Glenn: All right. Well, Fernando, I really appreciate your time and your being here.

Fernando Carminholi: Thank you for this opportunity. I hope that all the subscribers understand a little bit more clearly how important the cleaning process is before the heat treat.

About The Guest

Fernando Carminholi
Business Development Manager
Hubbard-Hall

Fernando Carminholi is the business development manager at Hubbard-Hall, a six-generation family business that develops, services, and supplies specialty chemicals for ferrous and non-ferrous metals. A chemical engineer graduate from E.S.P.M. in Sao Paulo, Brazil, he oversees the company’s distribution channels and business development team. Fernando has extensive experience in the chemical specialty products industry for surface finishing, focusing on industrial parts cleaning, metal pre-treatment, and functional electroplating.

Contact Fernando at fcarminholi@hubbardhall.com.

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Heat Treat Today Welcomes Industry Innovator Heather Falcone

February 27, 2025 / HEAT TREAT NEWS

Heat Treat Today is excited to announce the addition of Heather Falcone to the editorial and podcast team, beginning on Monday, March 3, 2025. She will be taking on the responsibilities of content editor for the daily e-newsletter, original content writer, and Heat Treat Radio contributor.

Heather Falcone
Content Editor/Content Writer/Heat Treat Radio Contributor
Heat Treat Today

Heather, the founder and principal of Falcone Consulting, LLC, is a servant leader with over 20 years of experience in heat treating, brazing, and chemical processing. She spent most of her formative years as a second-generation member of a family-owned heat treating and brazing business. As the former CEO of Thermal-Vac Technology, she successfully led the company through the pandemic, ensuring stability while propelling it into a new era that resulted in a successful exit in 2024. Passionate about challenging the status quo, she champions diverse teams and fair chance hiring, with a focus on developing successful teams that are future-proof and thriving.

Beyond her position as founder and principal at newly formed Falcone Consulting LLC, Heather is a board member, coach, speaker, and writer, advocating for small businesses, workforce development, and success for the heat treat community at large. She provides her expertise in aerospace specifications and the Nadcap process in an ongoing role as the special project consultant for Cook Induction Heating in Maywood, California. Additionally, she has played a pivotal role in industry organizations like the Metal Treating Institute, AMEC, and Nadcap, while also supporting local nonprofits such as Chrysalis and the Orange County Workforce Development Board.

“We’re thankful to have Heather joining the Heat Treat Today team,” said Doug Glenn, founder, owner, and publisher of Heat Treat Today. “I’ve known Heather for many years and have been impressed with her initiative, courage, and fearlessness in everything she does. As an organization that is deeply invested in making sure in-house heat treaters have the information they need to become more efficient and profitable, Heather will be an excellent addition to our editorial team. She knows the industry; she knows what our readers need. And as we all know, the happier the readers, the happier our advertisers.”

Heather is an Ironman triathlete, a Seven Summits enthusiast who has summitted Mt. Kilimanjaro and trekked in the Everest region, and a loving wife and mother to two teenage boys.

For more information, click here for Heather’s LinkedIn page, here for Falcone Consulting’s website, or here for her Heat Treat Today 40 Under 40 recognition in 2019.

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Heat Treat Radio #118: Saving Dollars with Ceramic Fiber Insulation

February 20, 2025 / ATMOSPHERE AIR FURNACES TECHNICAL CONTENT, HEAT TREAT RADIO, INSULATION TECHNICAL CONTENT, Manufacturing Heat Treat Technical Content

In this Heat Treat Radio episode, Mark Rhoa, Jr. from Chiz Bros, a company specializing in ceramic fiber products, discusses insulation with host Doug Glenn. Mark focuses on the benefits of ceramic fiber in industrial applications. The conversation covers decarbonization, the importance of insulation and thermal shock resistance, the shift to electrically heated modules, and practical maintenance tips for ceramic fiber-insulated furnaces.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

HTT · Heat Treat Radio #118: Saving Dollars with Ceramic Fiber Insulation

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Introduction (00:30)

Doug Glenn: I want to welcome our guest today: Mark Rhoa Jr. from Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Mark’s been involved with the industry for quite a while with Chiz Bros, our sponsor for today. Mark is also a Heat Treat Today 40 Under 40 honoree from the Class of 2021. And, Mark, could you tell me who started your company — your dad or your dad and his brother? I don’t know the history that well.

Mark Rhoa: My dad actually joined the company in ‘97, but when he joined, Chiz Bros. had been around for a good 30 years or so. It was started by the Chiz brothers originally: Al, Ray, and John Chiz. As they got older and some of them moved on from the company to retire, my dad took over the company in 2014, and that’s when I came on board.

I’ve been here about ten years. And Ray Chiz Jr. just recently retired; he is one of the original owners’ sons who was working here running our warehouse. He’s the last with the Chiz name to work here. We say that the Chiz haircut is kind of what I’ve got going on. You can know by the haircut there’s a lot of Chiz’s still working here, and you might even be an honorary.

Doug Glenn: I can be an honorary, for sure. I don’t have enough on the side.

Chiz has been around for 50 some years doing specialty solutions for refractory applications in the metals, power, glass, and ceramics industries. And you guys deal with multinational companies as well as the small Ma and Pa shop furnace manufacturers or heat treaters/thermal processors, a pretty good mix. You’ve got great customer service, reasonable pricing, and quick delivery. And I know you and I have talked about how you guys pride yourselves on having a lot of stuff in stock. And finally, you guys have your Pittsburgh location and are also in Detroit, which is a relatively new addition, right?

Mark Rhoa: Yeah, about two years ago we opened up a Detroit warehouse. We’ve always had some good clients up that way. You’ve got to have some boots on the ground to be super effective. I say to get the easy orders you’ve got to have the stuff on the ground to get the hard orders, which are the phone calls at 5 o’clock on a Friday saying, “Hey, we need to pick this up because the furnace is down.” And we didn’t have that opportunity to improve our customer service up there before opening that location.

We try to punch above our weight to compete with the big guys on pricing. We make sure we’re always still answering the phone.

Doug Glenn: It makes a huge difference when you’ve actually got people answering the phone.

My understanding is that you provide castables, fibers, brick, etc. But today we want to hone in a little bit on ceramic fiber.

Mark Rhoa: Ceramic fiber is the big portion of our business. We’re one of the biggest Unifrax (Alkegen) ceramic fiber distributors in the country. So, a lot of what we do is being driven by ceramic fiber products we supply. We still can supply castables, bricks, and everything in between. But ceramic fiber drives the ship for us.

What Is Ceramic Fiber? (04:58)

Doug Glenn: Let’s talk about that. Most of our listeners are folks with their own in-house heat treat. But let’s assume we’ve got some people watching that don’t know some basics.

Tell us about ceramic fiber: What is it? How is it made? What are we using it for?

Mark Rhoa: I describe it to people who may not know much about it by comparing it to the Pink Panther insulation that people may recognize up in their roof or in their walls. Ceramic fiber is white, but picture that insulation for 2300°F. That’s what ceramic fiber is, and it’s a form that we sell the most of right now.

You can take that and cut gaskets out of it. You can form it into hard boards through a vacuum forming process. You can take it folded into what we call ceramic fiber modules; your furnace probably has modules in it if it’s a traditional gas-fired or electric furnace. Ceramic fiber products typically aren’t used on the vacuum side of things. People with all vacuum furnaces are probably not going to be using ceramic fiber. There are cloths that are ceramic fiber based as well. There’s a bunch of other ways it’s used.

Ceramic fiber is made of a blown, spun glass. Essentially what you’re doing is dropping the liquid aluminum silica mixture, and it gets blown or blown and spun at super high temperatures. I’m not going to get into the details of the differences there, but whether the stream is blown or is spun on wheels will determine the tensile strength of blanket.

In the grand scheme of things, what you’re doing is collecting all that fiber and getting it onto a mechanism that’s moving along a conveyor belt. Then it’s getting needled from each side to interlock the fibers to make a 26” wide blanket. It’s going to be trimmed off an inch when it goes through, and at the end you have a 24” wide x 1” thick, 8-pound density roll coming out.

Those densities can vary based on how much fiber is going into it. It’s pounds per cubic foot. But when you’re using a 1” thick piece, it’s divided by twelve from a weight standpoint. The fiber you’re needling in there determines the density.

And there are slightly different chemistries for 2300°F, 2600°F, and the most expensive would be 3000°F polycrystalline. The process to make that is a little bit different, too.

But most people are probably more interested in what we’re doing with it. What’s the Chris Farley line in Tommy Boy? We’ll keep it PG, but “take a butcher’s word for it” — take our word for it; it’s made the right way.

Now we can get into how it’s actually used.

Doug Glenn: It’s basically like insulation in your house, like you said. That’s probably the best description of it for people that need to know. But it can obviously go to a much higher temperature.

In an industrial setting, why would you use fiber versus a castable or brick?

Why Fiber? (08:28)

Mark Rhoa: Ceramic fiber is a great insulator. We’ll probably get into why a better insulator is important for decarbonization efforts and things like that.

It’s certainly a better insulator than castables, easy to install, and easy to use. The main reason it’s preferred is for its insulating value and ability to have varying temperature ranges, which you can certainly do with castables and brick.

But to put brick in a wall 12” thick, for argument’s sake, you will need four layers of 3” brick on there. With ceramic fiber, you can take one 12” x 12” module, shoot it onto the shell, attach it, and be good to go from there.

The main thing would be longevity and stuff like thermal shock value. One of the things you have to worry about with castables and brick — maybe not as much with IFB but standard brick — is the heat cycling. Heat treat furnaces are a great example of that.

That door is opening up a lot, so the air is coming in there. People probably see it in their furnaces. The castable is going to want to crack because it’s not designed for thermal shock like ceramic fiber is.

There are certainly applications that you wouldn’t want to use ceramic fiber for. If you’re looking at a traditional heat treat furnace, it depends on how the load is supported: If the floor is the refractory, it is actually supporting the load, and you’re going to want some sort of brick, some sort of castable. Fiber is going to be soft, compressed, and get beat up. You can’t necessarily put it everywhere, but there are areas where it may be up for debate on.

You can use a brick or you can use fiber in the wall. Traditionally, you’re going to use fiber for the insulated value, thermal shock value, installation, and weight; it’s a lot lighter.

A lot of heat treating furnaces are small compared to the massive furnaces in steel melting. They’re going to ship heat treating furnaces. With ceramic fiber, a 12” x 12” fiber module, 12” thick, weighing roughly 12–14 lbs. is 5–10x lighter than brick or castable.

Repairability (10:51)

Doug Glenn: How about addressing the repairability issues between castable and brick and fiber?

Mark Rhoa: Fiber, especially if you’re getting into higher temperatures, can have some shrinkage to it. But you’re able to repair fiber a lot easier. If you wreck a little bit of fiber, you can get in there and get it repaired quickly. With a brick or castable everything’s tied together as either a monolithic piece or a bunch of bricks that are connected, it can start to become a house of cards scenario where you pull and one goes down then everything goes down.

Doug Glenn: It’s like a Jenga game. You pull that brick out on the bottom and what happens?

Figure 2. “You don’t want to pull out the wrong brick.”

Mark Rhoa: Yeah, you don’t want to pull the wrong brick.

Doug Glenn: You already mentioned the temperature ranges we’re talking about. The standard bottom temperature is 2300°F; the fibers are good up to 2300°F. Then you’ve got 2600°F and then 3000°F. Is that roughly the breakdown when you’re looking at fibers?

Mark Rhoa: I don’t know why they ended up doing this, but for 2300°F ceramic fiber, realistically you only want to use it to 2150°F. That goes along with the shrinkage curve of it. I forget the exact number, but I think it’s like in 24 hours, you get less than 3% shrinkage. Typically, the rule of thumb is that you don’t want to use that full temperature range; you want to give yourself 150°F of cushion to be safe. It will still have shrinkage after that up to that temperature.

I don’t know who ever thought of that; it was probably some genius marketing guy to get a little extra.

Fiber Shrinkage (12:57)

Doug Glenn: You’ve mentioned shrinkage a couple different times. Why does that happen with ceramic fiber? And how does that impact installation?

Mark Rhoa: When ceramic fiber hits its operating temperatures, it shrinks up. On the chemistry side, I don’t have an answer there. But we factor in compression to help alleviate when something shrinks. It’s already pushing out against something. It still keeps its resiliency (it wants to pop back out), and that’s factored into every design.

If you’re doing 12” modules, you’ll have a batten strip between them. That makes up for some of the shrinkage that may come where there’s not compression. Any sort of design we would do, or probably anyone would do, is going to factor in shrinkage. You don’t want to just put something in there, and when it shrinks, it leaves a gap. You want to make sure you have something in there that’s going to fill that gap; and that’s typically for modules.

Now if you’re getting to a low temperature, we’re talking about a furnace at 1200°F, you’re not going to have to worry about shrinkage. Even in some of those furnaces, you’ll see designs we call wallpaper — a pin’s exposed and you’re layering on top of it. You’re just kind of overlapping gaps, but you’re not going to have any shrinkage there, so you don’t really have to worry.

Figure 3. Avoiding gaps when shrinkage occurs

Doug Glenn: There is one question I did want to ask you when we were talking about the different temperature ranges of 2300°F, 2600°F, and 3000°F. Are the chemistries between those different?

Mark Rhoa: They’re all alumina silica based. 2300°F is like 50% alumina and 40% silica. They’ll typically inject some zirconia in it, maybe around 15% zirconia. That gives it the extra boost. Alumina is what drops down.

We don’t want to get into every example, but it does have a lower aluminum content. Sometimes in aluminum melting you can get some flexing because there’s zirconia in there, so you need to know the exact application.

And then the polycrystalline, what people call the 3000°F, would be 72% alumina. And that’s made in a calcined process. The 72% alumina is the key factor.

You can also have super high aluminum blankets. Saffil® is the typical brand name. And that’s a 95% plus alumina. That’s for high hydrogen atmospheres, stuff where there’s bad attacking, bad off gassing. The alumina is usually more resilient to that. Some aerospace applications have that stuff spected in for effectiveness and also because they probably have government money. Why not pay for the highest quality, most expensive thing, right?

Electric Element Modules (18:32)

Doug Glenn: You mentioned modules before, but I want to take a little bit of a different angle. The modules you were talking about have no type of heating element in them. They’re just simply the insulating modules that you put on the side of the wall, side by side, maybe alternating the orientation. But what I want to talk about are electric element modules. Can you describe what those are and why you are using them? And maybe hit on the decarbonization or electrification element of those?

Mark Rhoa: Traditional fiber modules are used in a gas furnace, even an electric furnace that may be heated by glow bars or radiant tubes or something like that. That’s going to have a similar penetration there.

One of the systems we call our ELE system. I’d say in the last two years we’ve probably had as many inquiries or conversations about going to these electrically heated modules than we have in the past 5–10 years combined. A lot of that has to do with companies wanting to get away from gas, or they’ve got pressures for different environmental or cost saving reasons.

What we’re doing with that is hanging the elements on the ceramic fiber module. And when they show the pictures of this one, there’ll be one in there. But that allows us to do a modular system where they can get a lot of power on those walls, and it lets us keep a lot of the same insulating value from using modules without having to use brick or a super heavy element in the sidewalls for support.

When someone says we’re putting this many BTUs of gas; here’s the load, size, weight. We do the electric calculations to see how many kilowatts of power we need to pump into this furnace and elements in order to heat something up just like you would do with gas.

And rest assured, someone a lot smarter than me does those calculations. I’m just a pretty face that gets to sell them. But this is something that we’re seeing a lot of. There’s a big push coming from the government and boards of directors.

Doug Glenn: It’s going to help companies reduce their carbon footprint if that is their desire.

I have a question for you about those and specifically about installation. If every module needs a power source, do you have to punch a hole in the furnace wall for every module, or can you interlink them and only have one power source at the end of the chain?

Mark Rhoa: Good question. I didn’t do a good job describing that, but the modules will still go in just like a regular module. They actually have an extra set of ceramic tubes in them. When we do our design, we know where the elements are going to be hung.

If you have a 10-foot wall, you’re not going to have ten 1-foot pieces of element. You’re going to have an eight foot string of elements along that wall, and they will be hooked into the loops. One end of the hook will go on a loop, the other end will go on the ceramic tube that’s inside the module.

If you have a 12’ x 12’ high wall, and you may have a 10’ element in there, you’re probably only going to have four penetrations, maybe more. It’s not going to look like Swiss cheese. They’re going to be linked together.

These are all based on the number of zones in a furnace, too. Some super high aerospace applications are going to have everything super fine tuned just like it is with burners. If you think about how certain applications require way more precision and control over burners, the same thing can be true for these elements, too. The more precision and control you need, the more complicated it’s going to be just like it is with burners.

Before you hang the elements, you could look in that furnace and it would look just the same as a regular gas-fired furnace without the burners. Then you start hooking the elements on the walls. And the pictures of it are helpful.

If anyone has seen Home Alone, he goes into his basement and his furnace is shooting out all the flames. If you walk into a plant and can see that, getting that to seal will prevent heat from leaving.
Mark Rhoa

Furnace Doors (23:52)

Doug Glenn: When I think about ceramic fiber (which you don’t often see it inside a furnace if the door is closed), but a lot of times you’ll see it jammed in around the doors. To me it doesn’t look like that’s the way it’s supposed to be. So, doors are an issue, right? Can ceramics help with that?

Mark Rhoa: In heat treating furnaces, the temperatures aren’t totally crazy like forging furnaces where there’s a lot of shrinkage so they’re replacing it all the time. In heat treat, the temperature is lower. The main wear and tear items we see when we’re working on a repair with a client are around the doors because they’re getting the mechanical abuse of constantly changing. In some of the decarbonization talks I’ve attended and given at trade shows, we’re really looking at ways to save heat. Just making sure your door is sealed properly can do wonders.

If anyone has seen Home Alone, he goes into his basement and his furnace is shooting out all the flames. If you walk into a plant and can see that, getting that to seal will prevent heat from leaving.

You hear all these decarbonization talks, you see all these millions of dollars being thrown around, and, really, you can make a huge difference on a shoestring budget by simply making sure your door is sealing the way it’s supposed to seal.

If you can see the heat coming out, it’s like dollars flying out of your furnace on a game show. You’d have people lined up for that every day of the week.

So you hit the nail right on the head there. A really small, easy way to make a calculated decarbonization effort is making sure you have a door plan or you’re changing it.

It’s the same thing with tuning burners. Little tunes to a burner can save tons of gas and tons of CO₂.

Figure 5. Heat leakage from doors needing maintenance

Doug Glenn: Making sure you’re maintaining good flame curtains on a continuous furnace, all that stuff just keeps the heat from coming out.

Did I see correctly that you guys do door repairs?

Mark Rhoa: We’ll do door repairs in our own shop. If someone ships a door to us, we’ll do the realigns there. About 20 years ago, we stopped having our outside contracting arm. Now we’re not doing any of the fieldwork. But we do realign doors in our shop.

Fiber is pretty easy to work with. Door perimeters are something that can easily be done by someone’s own maintenance crew. Maybe they’ll need one of our sales guys there making sure they do it right the first couple times. But it’s not a hard thing to do. If you have a 12 inch module perimeter, switch those 40 modules out once a year and you’ve got fresh gas savings.

Ceramic Maintenance (27:07)

Doug Glenn: Let’s shift gears a bit and talk about typical maintenance of ceramic-insulated furnace. What do we need to be careful about? Any tips you can offer?

Mark Rhoa: There’s another really affordable thing you can do. You can probably sometimes see this if you have a hot spot where paint’s chipping off or melting or if you have a temperature gun you can find those hot spots. If you see heat on the outside, then you’re typically going to see some sort of crack or gap on the inside. Make sure you have scheduled maintenance downtime with your furnace and stuff in any of those cracks.

If you’ve got a really big furnace or a continuous furnace, roller hearth, furnace type thing, the roll seals are some of the areas where you’re going to end up losing a lot of heat because there’s more wear and tear there. There’s just more opportunity for expansion and contraction.

We do have ceramic pumpable products. We call it liquid ceramic fiber for when there’s a hot spot on a furnace, it’s a big one, and you can’t get in there, you can drill a little hole on it, pump it in from the backside, and fill that up. You don’t want to start making your furnace Swiss cheese and poking holes.

It can be a quick stopgap. If you can’t get inside the furnace, fill it in from the backside, too. Because you don’t want those hot spots to grow and cause problems. You don’t want them to get to the hardware.

Then you may have a module where the hardware gets too hot in the backside and the module ends up falling in. That’s one scenario. You can get out ahead of it by filling some of those gaps.

For a refractory on the hearth, too, if you don’t want to replace a hearth you can find a refractory contractor to come in and (if you have a big furnace) spray gunite over the hearth to fix any gaps or cracks.

Doug Glenn: That’s more for castable, though?

Mark Rhoa: Yeah. On the fiber side of things, you’re looking for hot spots.

Doug Glenn: The takeaway is to make sure you’re taking regular thermal imaging of your shell of the furnace. If you’re noticing some hot spots, it’s time to investigate.

Mark Rhoa: If you have a lot of furnaces, you can get a thermal imaging gun for a couple hundred bucks and really [keep an eye out].

An even bigger deal are the doors. It will blow your mind if you look at the temperatures on a fresh door seal versus an old one. Have a temperature gun to justify to your bosses. “Hey, we realigned this, and it is 150°F. This time last year it was 250°F–350°F degrees.” Common sense can tell you we’re losing more heat when it’s like that.

Concerns with Free Floating Fiber (30:20)

Doug Glenn: Can you address the concern that some furnace users have regarding free floating fiber, especially in furnaces where there’s high velocity airflow?

Mark Rhoa: Talking about the benefits of fiber versus brick and castable, one of the benefits of the hard refractory is it does better with high velocities. Patriot furnaces may have a fan in there. Typically, they’re not getting high enough where we need to worry. You can put coatings on the fiber or rigid dyes or things like that to harden them.

But from a health and safety perspective, anytime you’re working with fiber you want to make sure you’re wearing a mask. They have warning labels on them. It’s not like it was back in the day. I’m not allowed to say the “a” word [asbestos]. So there are not worries like that anymore, either. But refractory ceramic fiber still does have a warning label on it.

We do have body size soluble fiber. Alkaline earth silica (AES), non RCF fiber, a bunch of fancy names, are more prevalent in Europe because of their rules. California’s got a lot of rules, too….

But we do supply that as well. It doesn’t have any sort of warning labels on it.

Obviously, when you’re working with it, you want to wear a mask because dust in general isn’t good. But it’s naturally soluble for your body.

It’s not quite as strong. It can have more shrinkage at lower temperatures. But it’s best to talk with somebody and understand what the right product is to use. Things can be a little worse, but there is a slight move in the direction of body soluble fiber because there are no warning labels on it. But it’s not drastic.

Some of the similar concerns foundries have is with sand and airborne silica now. Technically, I guess going to the beach we’d have airborne silica, too. There’s justification to taking those precautions, but it’s certainly not all doom and gloom.

The ceramic fiber is essentially little glass beads, like a tadpole head and then there’s a fiber tail that interlocks.
Mark Rhoa

Doug Glenn: What I heard wasn’t so much a human safety issue. It was the use of ceramic blankets inside of an aluminum annealing furnace: If the fibers got airborne, they would come to rest on the coils and mess up the strip going through. And then you have contaminated coil or it’s marked.

Mark Rhoa: The issue with that is the shot on the fibers. The ceramic fiber is essentially little glass beads, like a tadpole head and then there’s a fiber tail that interlocks.

Fiber has come a long way. The shot content is way lower than it used to be. But it’s certainly a concern if that gets on a coil and then it goes through the rolling mill and you make a small dent in all the glass … yeah.

A lot of different things can be done for that. People put up cladding; people rigidize it to lock the fiber in.

There are definitely concerns for all the applications. Big aluminum homogenizing furnaces may have that. Traditional, smaller batch annealing furnaces may not.

It would be the same thing if a little piece of brick chipped off onto [indiscernible]. The worry with some of the fiber stuff is it’s obviously a lot smaller so you don’t get to see it.

Doug Glenn: It’s a lot more conducive. You can imagine the difference between a brick being hit with high velocity air and a fiber, you would just see the degradation of the fiber. A fiber ceramic blanket would go down quicker.

Induction at Chiz (35:20)

I have one other question for you about Chiz. Your company was one of our sponsors at our recent Heat Treat Boot Camp, and I was surprised when you had an induction coil on your table. If you don’t mind, address what it is Chiz is doing in the induction area?

Mark Rhoa: We were using the company down the road from us, Advanced Materials Science (AMS), to machine some of our fiber boards and bricks that were a little too complicated for what we had in-house at the time. They have some really good CNC equipment up there. The guy who owned AMS was looking to sell off that branch of his business. We had been one of his bigger clients, and we came to an agreement to it; it’s still out of the same building, same equipment, same guys that are doing all the good work.

We started getting in there and saw a lot of the induction heating equipment on the client list — a lot of those electrical plastics, high temperature plastics, electrical marinite and transite boards, which we got into a little bit in the Chiz Brothers world but didn’t fully dive into it because the temperatures are a little bit lower than what we’re dealing with on the ceramic fiber side of things.

It’s been really good for us. They’ve got great machining capabilities down there to machine some of these complex parts out of NEMA G10 and marinite and transite and all these terms that were relatively new to me when we bought them.

It’s really helped us at some of these trade shows because three types of furnace guys walk by: the gas-fired guy, he’s my best friend; the induction guy used to be like, “There’s not that much we can do with you.” Now, we can do a lot with them.

And then I’m still trying to figure out how I can be happy when the vacuum furnace guy walks by. That will be a different battle for a different day. I’m not trying to get into the graphite felt world. I probably just can’t be friends with everybody.

But it’s been good to get into the induction industry. It’s something that we’ve been growing over the last year or two because we hadn’t been engaged with people quite as much as we had.

Doug Glenn: Well, we’ll look for opportunities for you to be friends with the vacuum people. One thing I know from experience, Mark, you could be friends with anybody. I’m sure you can work it.

Mark Rhoa: I’ll try my best.

Doug Glenn: You’re doing good.

Thanks so much. I appreciate your time and appreciate you being here.

Mark Rhoa: Look forward to seeing you at the next event. For anyone watching, Heat Treat Boot Camp was great. Whether you’re a supplier or heat treater, it’s a good group of people bouncing ideas. It’s a crash course on a hundred different things in two days. I was there to sell stuff, but I learned stuff, too, which was an added bonus. I’d recommend it to anyone watching. It’s a good way to force yourself to get out of the office. I will definitely be back.

Attendees of the 2024 Heat Treat Boot Camp with the Heat Treat Today team

About The Guest

Mark Rhoa
Vice President
Chiz Bros
Eleanor Rhoa, daughter

In the heat treat industry, Mark handles Chiz Bros‘ relationships with various end-use customers as well as furnace manufacturers. Given the critical need for energy efficiency and uniform temperature throughout the heating process, Mark has been able to develop custom refractory and insulation solutions for customers to meet their complex needs. Through participation in the ASM’s Heat Treat Show, MTI’s Furnaces North America, Heat Treat Today’s Heat Treat Boot Camp, and IHEA’s Decarbonization SUMMIT, Mark has been supportive of the industry, but more importantly, has helped countless customers improve their thermal efficiency and profitability. Mark was recognized in Heat Treat Today 40 Under 40 Class of 2021.

Contact Mark at mrhoajr@chizbros.com.

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Heat Treat Radio #118: Saving Dollars with Ceramic Fiber Insulation Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #117: How GM Started & Grew FNC for Brake Rotors

January 16, 2025 / AUTOMOTIVE HEAT TREAT TECHNICAL CONTENT, HEAT TREAT RADIO, NITROCARBURIZING TECHNICAL CONTENT

In this Heat Treat Radio episode, host Doug Glenn converses with Mike Holly on his extensive experience in ferritic nitrocarburizing (FNC). Listen as they discuss Mike’s career at General Motors, where he implemented FNC to improve brake rotor performance. This episode delves into the technical aspects of FNC, its benefits such as enhanced wear and corrosion resistance, and its application beyond automotive, including military and industrial uses.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

HTT · Heat Treat Radio #117: How GM Started & Grew FNC for Brake Rotors

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Introduction (00:36)

Doug Glenn: Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio.

I have the great privilege today of talking with Mike Holly who I think you’re going to find very fascinating; I know I have in the conversations we’ve had so far. We’re primarily going to talk about ferritic nitrocarburizing (FNC) because Mike has some great experience in that area. But first I want to welcome you, Mike, and give you an opportunity to tell us a bit about you and your work history.

Mike Holly: I’m currently retired but I am working as an engineering consultant on my own, primarily in the areas of heat treatment, casting, welding, coding, and plating. I specialize in automotive and heavy truck applications. As far as my education, I’m a graduate metallurgical engineer with a bachelor’s from Wayne State University in Detroit and a master’s from Purdue. I have 43 years of experience in the auto and heavy truck industry; 32 of those years were with General Motors who I retired from. I was assigned to the materials engineering group in Warren, Michigan, and I specialized in driveline, exhaust, steering, chassis structures, and brake applications, primarily metal applications.

Mike Holly, lead consultant for Mike Holly Metals LLC, on ferritic nitrocarburizing

FNC and Brake Rotors (02:30)

Doug Glenn: The topic that we want to focus on today is FNC. Although if you think of anything else that might be of interest to our thermal processing people, feel free to deviate. How did you get introduced to ferritic nitrocarburizing or case hardening in general?

Mike Holly: I’ve always been involved with heat treatment and case hardening as a metallurgical engineer working on heavy gearing applications. I’m very familiar with FNC and way back in the mid-2000s (about 2005), we were looking at our warranty. In brakes, we saw an opportunity to improve the performance of our brake rotor by reducing brake judder, or pedal pulsation, which caused a lot of customer dissatisfaction. It caused a lot of warranties, knowing that these vehicles would be brought in to be serviced.

We were aware of FNC being done on brake rotors. It had been tried, but brake rotors are a highly dimensional, critical part, and control of distortion is paramount. With prior efforts, that distortion was completely out of control. And that’s why it never went anywhere. So, another team member and myself at GM took it offline and worked out the details so we could FNC-finish machined rotors with no subsequent grinding.

And we were able to do that, working with a company in Detroit at the time called Kolene. We were working in salt, but later on we did change the process to gas. The learnings between salt and gas pretty much transferred completely. We issued some patents, both for the FNC process itself and as it applies to brakes and some subsequent processing to improve the corrosion resistance of the rotor. My name is not on the patent as my prior employer owns the rights.

Doug Glenn: That is often the case, right? If you’re working for somebody, it’s their patent and not yours. How many patents were you involved with?

Mike Holly: I believe the number is 14 different patents. Some relate to the process directly; some relate to the interaction and the selection between the brake rotor and the friction material. There are quite a few patents that my prior employer has on this process. The first application was in 2009 in the Cadillac DTS and the Buick Lucerne. That’s where the rotors were first used.

Success with FNC (05:36)

Doug Glenn: Backing up to 2005, what do you think had made the FNC unsuccessful up to that point?

Mike Holly: Control of the output: The FNC process that was being used produced almost a solid white layer and we could not get the stopping power out of the friction material. This has to do with the application of something called a transfer layer. We discovered that you need porosity to get the transfer layer down.

Also, orientation of the brake rotor in the process is important; the patents tell you in the specs to orient the parts vertically.

Doug Glenn: Are you talking about the orientation of the rotor in the furnace?

Ferritic nitrocarburizing is a case hardening heat treatment. We are actually making a composite material. It’s within the families of nitriding, carbonitriding and carburizing. These are all done at different temperatures, and they produce different case depths. But again, you are making a composite material.
Mike Holly

Mike Holly: Yes. So it wasn’t anything we invented.

To try to control distortion further, we stress relieved the castings. We took all the residual stresses out from the founding, or the casting, of the part prior to machining, and then put the parts through ferritic nitrocarburizing, fully machined, no other grinding necessary; doing so, we’re able to maintain the critical dimensions.

A brake rotor is a safety critical part, so there are a lot of steps and validations to get that implemented.

Doug Glenn: It sounds like before 2005, and correct me if I’m wrong on this one, Mike, they were FNCing unfinished parts? They were FNCing the rotors before they were machined?

Mike Holly: No, they were doing finished parts and discovered that the dimensions, but the lateral runout and the thickness were so out of control that they would have to go in and subsequently grind to get it back in the dimension. But the FNC case depth is only 10 to 20 microns. You may wind up just grinding the case right off!

What Is FNC? (08:38)

Finish machining FNCed parts really can’t be done without removing the FNC, and then you lose the benefit. It’s a difficult matter to heat treat finished machined parts. It is done. But it was control of dimensions that made the difference.

Doug Glenn: Let’s take a step back then. I want to talk some very basics. You can give us a little metallurgy lesson for people who might not know what FNC is. Can you tell us about what we are doing in this process?

Mike Holly: Ferritic nitrocarburizing is a case hardening heat treatment. We are actually making a composite material. It’s within the families of nitriding, carbonitriding and carburizing. These are all done at different temperatures, and they produce different case depths. But again, you are making a composite material.

FNC is a thermal chemical treatment. We diffuse carbon and nitrogen into the surface of the iron. This strengthens the iron and provides not only a wear-resistant case but corrosion resistance. That’s a peculiar advantage to FNC.

We can specify for steels, stainless steels, gray irons, nodular irons, a whole host of ferrous materials. FNC can be performed in a gaseous atmosphere, molten salt or even a fluidized bed. You involve two gases: a source of carbon, which could be carbon dioxide or natural gas, and a source of nitrogen, which is typically ammonia.

The process is done subcritical, which means below the critical temperature of like 723°C (1333°F) — it’s well below that. It’s performed at around 560°C to say 590°C (1040°F to 1090°F). It produces a very hard wear and corrosion-resistant case from 10 to 20 microns and thickness.

Screenshot from the ECM USA advertisement (embedded in the podcast video) highlighting the ferritic nitrocarburizing processing they provide

Benefits of FNC (10:35)

So, what are the benefits? Why would we even do this? For one thing, it’s done at such a low temperature that it’s a low distortion heat treatment; we’re not going through the transformation temperature.

Doug Glenn: For example, just for those who don’t know, like carburizing — that means going above critical.

Mike Holly: That’s right. With FNC, we get an improved fatigue durability due to the higher surface strength. Ferritic nitrocarburized parts have a compressive residual stress on the surface, and that’s beneficial for fatigue. It’s resistant to adhesive and abrasive wear, it provides a fairly good surface finish, and, very importantly, it improves corrosion resistance compared to other processes.

And a critical environmental concern is there’s no hazardous waste treatment or landfill involved. These gases are readily available. There’s really no waste treatment that we have to concern ourselves with.

Why don’t we do every gear this way? It has to do with the case depth; these are very shallow cases. For heavily loaded parts like ring and pinion high point gearing, we need a thicker case to resist the rolling contact fatigue.

In that application we have to go to carburizing or carbonitriding. And for some shafts where we get very high bending stress, we have to use induction hardening, which is a case hardening treatment that doesn’t use diffusion. You’re just modifying the microstructure of the surface.

FNC has a unique niche: It’s subcritical, has good wear and corrosion resistance, and it improves the fatigue properties.

Doug Glenn: I want to ask you about other applications for FNC besides brake rotors.

First, let me ask you this since you’re talking about the shallow case depth. I’m thinking to myself, you’ve got the rotor and you’ve got your friction product (which we would consider to be the pads that are mounted to the caliper, let’s say on a car). Are those pads not also kind of grinding off the shallow case depth of the rotors?

Mike Holly: It could if you had an aggressive enough friction material. In one of the designs that we had to make was selection of friction materials. And at the time the non-asbestos organic friction materials worked very well with FNC.

But as we go up in aggressiveness, one of the projects I’m working on is improving the case wear resistance of the FNC brake rotors. We’re doing that by alloying gray iron with niobium. We alloy with niobium and form niobium carbides in the case. This greatly improves the wear resistance on the iron side. So that’s how we’re addressing the more aggressive friction materials that would typically be used in Europe.

Applications of FNC (14:51)

Doug Glenn: I want to come back to that niobium, too, so we’ll probably hit on that again. What other applications of FNC have you seen?

Mike Holly: It’s used where wear distortion and corrosion resistance are very important. Many lightly loaded gears will fit into this category. Struts, the devices that hold up your hoods, they’ll be FNC. Some locking mechanisms are FNC. Brake backing plates are currently done. And I think one of the biggest applications is clutch pack discs, which are small 1040, 1050 steel materials (that may not be the only alloy that’s used). They’re FNCed to improve the wear resistance in the case.

Why don’t we do every gear this way? It has to do with the case depth; these are very shallow cases. For heavily loaded parts like ring and pinion high point gearing, we need a thicker case to resist the rolling contact fatigue.
Mike Holly

An upcoming application I’m working on is chassis cradles and frames. We stamp these pieces out of steel, and we weld them. But when we weld them, the weld heat affected zones can lose strength. What we’ve come up with is by using a niobium alloy, a high strength, low alloy steel, and FNC heat treating it, all the weld heat affected zones have good fatigue performance, along with the rest above the cradle. That’s something I worked on at GM, and there’s a patent on that.

And brake rotors are the latest application which has benefited from FNC treatment. They provide very long-term durability, reduce brake judder, and they’re very commonly used for electric vehicles. Because of the regenerative cycle, there is not a lot of friction application. We have to be very concerned about corrosion buildup on an electric vehicle application.

Doug Glenn: When you start mentioning about car frames and things of that sort, have you gotten at all involved with this giga cast thing for Tesla? I mean is there any FNC going on there?

Mike Holly: Well, I’m not sure what Tesla is doing, but with chassis structures, you’re not only balancing strength. Strength is important; you’re also balancing stiffness. Stiffness could be related to the metal. Now steel has very high Young’s modulus value compared to aluminum. The way you have to make that up with aluminum is through section properties: Thickness and shape.

There’s always competition between steel and non-ferrous materials, whether it be cast aluminum or fabricated aluminum and steel. They each have their advantages, and there have been many vehicles made with both types of construction. Where stiffness is critical, typically steel dominates. That’s the story of chassis structures.

Doug Glenn: When we spoke before, I think you mentioned that there are some non-automotive applications for FNC like golf clubs and some other things?

Mike Holly: I have seen it performed at a company in Michigan where they’re doing, for example, very large gates that are used for hydroelectric plants. They’re FNCing the gate to improve its erosion resistance from water. It’s done in many military applications for devices that would hold onto ordinance. It can be used on stainless steels to improve their wear and strength. There are non-automotive applications for sure.

If you attend the Shot Show this month, January 2025, you’ll know that a lot of firearms are known to need FNC treatment. Learn more at https://shotshow.org/

FNC at General Motors (19:52)

Doug Glenn: I want to ask you a question about the business side of FNC. A lot of times there’s a lot of inertia to keep things the way they are, right? A lot of our advertisers have trouble breaking in with new technologies. From your perspective as one of the lead guys on this for GM, what did it take to get the FNC process into your production schedule?

Mike Holly: First, we had to prove that this is something that would benefit the client. The client would benefit twofold: The vehicles would resist distortion and corrosion; that would improve the performance of the brake in terms of resisting pedal pulsation.

Also, warranties can be very costly. Adding this type of enhancement reduces warranty costs. But you do have to balance the cost reduction of warranty versus the cost of the process. Initially it was very costly, but we wanted to see how it would perform in real time. And at game speed, which means in the customer’s hands.

There was a very willing group at GM, the Cadillac people, who wanted to be first. And they were willing to do this. It turned out quite well. And since that time, it’s been adopted by many car platforms including many competitors.

General Motors, the first to use FNC processed rotors on their pickup trucks and big SUVs, with Ford not far behind; in this Heat Treat Today article from April 2023, Michael Mouilleseaux reflects on the very commercial Mike Holly references in his interview: “I was shocked the first time I saw the commercial: a Silverado pickup truck, out in the snow, and the speaker saying, ‘We now have an 80,000-mile brake system because of a heat treating process called FNC!'” Read more at: https://www.heattreattoday.com/featured-news/how-tip-ups-forever-transformed-brake-rotor-manufacturing/

Doug Glenn: Do you have any idea what it was about the guys in the Cadillac DTS division that made it more attractive, more palatable to them than others?

Mike Holly: They wanted to be first. They wanted to offer a premium vehicle with premium performance. They advertised it in their brochures.

When it was adopted by the truck platforms, which was a really big deal in terms of volume, it was actually advertised on one of the Super Bowls early on. I still have that.

Doug Glenn: That would be very interesting to see a Super Bowl ad talking about brake rotors.

Mike Holly: Brakes and FNC. You know, the customer is king, and you have to provide something that they’re willing to go along with. Ultimately, we have to make money. Those were key characteristics.

Starting Out with FNC (23:26)

Doug Glenn: At that point did you just jump in full bore — buy the equipment and do it yourself? Or did you first start by doing some outsourcing of it?

Mike Holly: It was originally done in the existing supply base. We used existing heat treaters. The furnaces were not optimized for brake rotors; parts were being shipped a lot.

Before we started purchasing equipment, we wanted to make sure this was going to operate in real time at game speed as we expected. As the platforms were added, it was very clear from the beginning (and we know this from highly machined gearing) that the best thing is to have the heat treat shop right in the manufacturing facility. That way you’re not shipping these very dimensionally critical parts all over the place. And the dunnage is expensive.

Today the FNC operations are co-located for the most part with the machining plant. And in many cases, you’ll see the foundry, the machining plant and FNC all in the same locale. This eliminates shipping and transferring costs, maintaining your highly machined parts and eliminating the handling. These are heavy parts, and the furnaces have to be designed to accept the thermodynamic load of large parts. And it’s preferred to do it by the ton — a lot of parts at once. And these are batch processes, so they’re very receptive to that.

Part Fixturing (25:23)

Doug Glenn: Earlier you mentioned the criticalness of fixturing. Is there anything more you can say about that? We don’t want to disclose any secrets.

Mike Holly: Generally, our patents will just say vertical orientation. The heat treat suppliers all have different furnaces, so that’s for them. They design their own racking, and that’s their property. They don’t have to disclose that.

The OEMs just require dimensional control. So, show us statistically that your lateral runout, your thickness and your wheel mount surface meet our specs. And, of course, the guidance that the parts should be oriented vertically and should be stress relieved before machining is out there.

As far as the intimate details of the rack and how heavily loaded the furnace is, that’s all their efficiencies, and they own that. I don’t reveal that to anybody. That’s theirs. It’s not for me to cross fertilize the industry with that.

Early Players in FNC (26:49)

Doug Glenn: For posterity’s sake, it would be nice to know who some of the early players were in this. Obviously, your DTS Cadillac division were kind of the end users. But who were the people outside of GM who helped out?

Mike Holly: I’ll give some credit here: I mentioned Kolene. I think they’re out of the salt bath business now. The original salt bath heat treater was KC Jones in Hazel Park, Michigan, and then the gas processing was basically first implemented at Woodworth in Detroit.

Doug Glenn: I’m familiar with them, and I think they’re still doing it, right? From what I understand, Woodworth’s got a huge business in that.

Mike Holly: They are still doing it. They’re a very dominant player, but other players have entered the market and been very successful. It can be done. And from the OEMs perspective, competition is great.

I was involved in developing processors not only in North America, but in Asia and South America.

Doug Glenn: Were there are a lot of hoops to jump through for the folks at Woodworth or Kolene, for example? Do you have any tips or suggestions for companies who are wanting to supply stuff like that to GM?

Mike Holly: Initially there were a lot of lessons learned. We were able to work through that — mainly to get the scrap rate down. Now it’s down to very low levels. There’s continual learnings like stress relief, for example. It’s since been discovered that not all brake rotors need to be stress relieved. Depending on the geometry of the rotor, they may not develop a lot of residual stresses in the casting operation. Or the casting operations could be different if you have, say, a vertical part line with very long shakeout, the cooling rate is rather slow. We’ll develop minimal residual stresses that you may not have to stress relief. But at the end of the day, the dimensions must be met, and 100% of these parts are typically checked for dimensions.

The latest change occurring that’s driving new ideas is the Euro 7 regulation, the dust emission.
Mike Holly

FNC and New Technologies (29:39)

Doug Glenn: Let’s jump back to the process a little bit. This may have to do with some technology moving forward. But is there any alternative to FNC at this point? Any competitive processes?

Mike Holly: The latest change occurring that’s driving new ideas is the Euro 7 regulation, the dust emission. And I can describe that if you’re interested in a very short description.

They’re basically new rules from the European Commission. They’re intended to provide cleaner vehicles in terms of emissions and air quality. The latest implementation date appears to be 2026. They have a rollout date of when you have to meet the requirements. And it is particularly focused on brakes and tire-related emissions.

This is according to the SAE; I’ll give them credit where credit is due. They basically tell us that with Euro 7, brake particle emissions (size in the PM10 range; inhalable particulate around ten microns and smaller like dust and pollen and 2.5 microns) must reduce by 25% to 30% to a maximum of, say, seven milligrams per kilometer.

It’s a very complicated regulation. I think the latest data I’ve seen is 20, 35, but even if it’s 2035, we have to start working on that today.

The two technologies that I think are going to come to the forefront is going to be FNC and laser cladding, which you may have seen coming out of Europe. In laser cladding, we’re going to clad the brake rotor, the thermal spraying type of application with a very hard wear-resistant layer of titanium carbide. That will require post-grinding.

What I’m working on is FNC and enhancing the case properties by alloying the iron with niobium. Now, is this an entirely new idea? I don’t think so. Most metallurgists will tell you that even in carbides and grades we use different steels to improve either the case or core properties. Alloying additions are well-known in the heat treat industry. I’m boosting the hardness of the FNC case with niobium carbides. It also benefits the core by improving the strength of the core.

I think those are the two technologies involved.

I think niobium plus FNC is certainly the low-cost approach. Will it be compatible with all friction materials? In the most aggressive friction materials out there, you might have to go to laser cladding. But I think for the majority of friction materials, FNC on its own or FNC plus niobium will work, and they’re very low-cost type additions. Niobium alloying with cast iron is very well-known, and it’s been done in the past. It doesn’t require a lot of capital investment. If you already have FNC-heat treated rotors, you don’t have to buy furnaces. In my opinion, it is the low-cost option to accomplish the objective of meeting Euro 7.

Doug Glenn: I want to go back to that process of niobium a little bit just to be clear. The niobium is alloyed into the rotor to start with, right?

Mike Holly: That’s correct.

Doug Glenn and Mike Holly discussing laser cladding, grinding, and carbides in FNC

Doug Glenn: You’re not infusing it with….?

Mike Holly: No.

Doug Glenn: Ok, you’ve got the niobium and the carbides in the rotor to start with, and you’re just FNCing it as usual.

Mike Holly: It’s an alloy furnace addition at the foundry. It has been done in either electric or cupola melting. There is a heavy truck rotor application that was niobium alloyed for many years, and that was advertised as a 1 million-mile rotor. It had a very high niobium addition, so it affected the machinability of the part.

In the heavy truck industry, it’s all about uptime — keeping the trucks out of the shop and on the road. It accomplished the client’s objective.

Doug Glenn: You mentioned advertising again. I’ve got to go back and find this DTS advertisement on the Super Bowl.

Mike Holly: I think it was a truck application, Silverado Sierra.

Doug Glenn: I’ve got to find that.

The cladding process, if we’re talking about which one of these processes might win out if there was competition between them, is the cladding process done piece by piece? How do they clad a rotor? In FNC you’re not doing it piece by piece.

Mike Holly: One at a time.

Doug Glenn: Do you think the cost element will be the deal-breaker there, besides the fact that you’re adding cladding and post-grinding?

Carbides that could be used in ferritic carburizing: niobium, titanium and tungsten

Mike Holly: Yes, those are very costly. But the most costly part of it is the materials. You have to put an adhesion layer down, that’s basically a 316-type stainless steel all done with laser type thermal spray application and then a second layer of the carbide.

There are a couple carbides that could be used; titanium carbide is the favorite now. Niobium carbide could be used. Tungsten carbide can be used, but that has some environmental effects; I think tungsten has fallen out of favor. 316 contains both nickel chromium and molybdenum. Nickel is traded on the London Metal Exchange. Your ability to control costs with nickel is minimal. Nickel and molybdenum, especially, is used in other applications such as high temperature alloys. So, you’re going to get competition from the turbine engine material.

In the case of FNC, ammonia, natural gas, carbon dioxide, and propane are all readily available worldwide. They are not controlled by any LME (London Metal Exchange) or anything like that.

Also, once you grind the surface, you have to deal with the grinding swarf. You cannot just put nickel to drain; that has to be treated. And, of course, you would like to recover it.

But I don’t want to throw the laser cladding people completely under the bus; it produces a very hard, wear-resistant layer.

Doug Glenn: It sounds like there may be applications where the cladding makes sense, but for your everyday truck and car you probably don’t need that high end rotor.

Mike Holly: I think we have to get back to basics. What does the brake do? It’s an energy conversion device. It’s converting mechanical energy to heat, or in the case of regenerative braking, it’s charging a battery. There’s the brake rotor, the metallic surface and the friction material. It has to be looked at as a system. What are the performance objectives that we intend to meet? And what is the desired durability and cost?

Doug Glenn: It seems like from what you’re describing FNC would have a huge cost advantage.

Mike Holly: I think so.

Current State of Brake Rotor Industry (39:05)

Doug Glenn: In your consulting work which you mentioned earlier, you’re working on improving the wear life of these rotors using FNC by incorporation of niobium?

Mike Holly: Yes. I published an SAE paper recently, and I’m going to publish another one in the upcoming North American colloquium and also in EuroBrake. My clients are sponsoring various tests and evaluations both here, in Europe and in South America. We’re getting a lot of good data, but competition makes us better. It truly does. You see it at these brake meetings. There’s always the cladding people, and there’s always the FNC people.

Doug Glenn: What is the leading brake event in the United States?

Mike Holly: In my opinion, it would be the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Brake Colloquium. But there’s also the regular SAE congress. In Europe, it would be EuroBrake. And I think there’s comparable activities in Asia.

Doug Glenn: I just thought of a question I wanted to ask you before: You said Euro 7 is for brakes and tires, and they’re concerned about the particles created by both when they’re used — tire wear on the roads or brake friction?

Mike Holly: Yes. And they’re concerned about the microplastics from the tire. I think the tire people have a bigger job than the brake people do. But brakes are a fairly significant challenge.

Doug Glenn: I’m laughing because I’m thinking it depends how you drive. Some people are a little heavier on the brakes than others.

Are you fairly confident that Euro 7 will come to the U.S. at some point?

Mike Holly: I’m not a regulations expert, but I think it likely will. It’s more of a political question. I understand from talking to some contacts in Asia that they plan on adopting it. We’ll see; it’s definitely going to add cost.

Doug Glenn: Yes, most regulations do.

Final Thoughts (42:18)

Doug Glenn: Is there anything else you would like to add before we wrap up?

Mike Holly: I not only work on brakes; I’ve also worked in suspension springs. Some of those are microalloyed to improve their properties. I can do CQI-9 audits. I’ve worked on coatings and platings (hard chrome or electroless nickel). If someone would need an extra hand, I get to help out.

Doug Glenn: You’ve got my vote. When did you retire from GM?

Mike Holly: I retired in 2021, and I currently live near Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Doug Glenn: And you’ve built your own consultancy, which is great. Thanks for taking the time to visit with us. I appreciate your expertise.

Mike Holly: Thank you.

About The Guest

Mike Holly
Consultant
Mike Holly Metals LLC

Mike is currently a consultant with Mike Holly Metals LLC, specializing in heat treatment, coating, casting, metal forming and joining operations. He has 42 years of experience in industry, including 32 years at the General Motors Materials Engineering department where he was assigned to support automotive and truck chassis applications. He holds 15 patents and was key in the development of Ferritic Nitrocarburizing Brake Rotors. Mike has a Bachelor of Science in Metallurgical Engineering from Wayne State University and a Masters from Purdue University.

Contact Mike at mike.holly72@att.net.

Search Heat Treat Equipment And Service Providers On Heat Treat Buyers Guide.Com

Heat Treat Radio #117: How GM Started & Grew FNC for Brake Rotors Read More »

The Holiday Edition of This Week in Heat Treat Social Media

January 3, 2025 / MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT NEWS

Welcome to the first installment of Heat Treat Today’s This Week in Heat Treat Social Media of 2025, and today we are focusing on holiday-themed social media posts. From handing out Christmas cheer to learning opportunities shared over the holiday break, check out these posts and videos for a roundup of festal heat treat social media: We start with alternatives to New Year’s resolutions.

As you know, there is so much content available on the web that it’s next to impossible to sift through all of the articles and posts that flood our inboxes and notifications on a daily basis. So, Heat Treat Today is here to bring you the latest in compelling, inspiring, and entertaining heat treat news from the different social media venues that you’ve just got to see and read! If you have content that everyone has to see, please send the link to editor@heattreattoday.com.

1. Not Into Resolutions? Here Are Some Alternatives

Leave it to young leaders in the heat treat industry to think of new ways to approach a new year. What’s your innovative alternative to resolutions?

Look these posts up on LinkedIn here: Kalen Fitch at Gasbarre; Sarah Jordan; Tim Mohr.

2. Heat Treaters Changing Lives

Something about the folks in this industry: they just love to reach out and help others.

Look these posts up on LinkedIn here: Wirco and Solar Atmospheres

3. We Don’t Stop Learning Just Because It’s a Holiday Break

Between important family time, seasonal activities, and festal joy, some of your industry colleagues were uploading opportunities for you to expand your knowledge about heat treating and all things related.

Look these posts up on LinkedIn here: Anhui Qasim Grinding Ball Group Co.,Ltd; Nonthaphat Sinprasong; and Light Metal Age.

4. Watch & Listen

Did you see or hear any of these videos or podcasts from 2024?

Check out Carlos Torres (2019 40 Under 40 alumni) hosting the Heat Treat Podcast on YouTube; Advanced Heat Treat Corp‘s post on LinkedIn; and the Heat Treat Radio page here.

5. Brain Fun To Launch the New Year

Sweep out that holiday fog! It’s time for some gymnastics for the brain!

Look these posts up on LinkedIn here: Metallurgical Engineering; Srini Vanapalli (the question); Srini Vanapalli (the solution); and Metallurgical Engineering.

Find Heat Treating Products and Services When You Search on Heat Treat Buyers Guide.com

The Holiday Edition of This Week in Heat Treat Social Media Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #116: Basic Practices for Successful Leak Detection

December 19, 2024 / HEAT TREAT RADIO, Manufacturing Heat Treat Technical Content, VACUUM PUMPS GAUGES VALVES TECHNICAL CONTENT

In this Heat Treat Radio episode, Dave Deiwert, a seasoned expert in leak detection, shares key steps to locate leaks in a vacuum furnace. Host Doug Glenn and his guest specifically look at helium as a tracer gas. From Dave’s extensive experience starting as a field service engineer to founding his own company, Tracer Gas Technologies, listen as he identifies systematic approaches, the influence of air currents, and cost-effective strategies for effective leak detection.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

HTT · Heat Treat Radio #116: Best Practices for Successful Leak Detection

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Meet Dave Deiwert (01:10)

Doug Glenn: Welcome to another episode of Heat Treat Radio. We’re talking today about leak detection in vacuum, and we’re happy to have Dave Deiwert with us who is a leak detection expert.

Dave, would you give our listeners a little bit of background about you and your qualifications in the industry, and then we’ll jump into some questions about leak detection?

Dave Deiwert: I’ve been in leak detection since 1989. I started off my career as a field service engineer. I did that for about 10 years, then moved into sales engineering for probably the second third of my career. And for the last number of years, I’ve been a product manager and applications manager, working with several of the major vacuum and leak detection companies in the world. I thoroughly enjoy what I do and helping others with their leak testing applications.

Doug Glenn: And now you’ve got your own company. Could we hear a bit about that?

Dave Deiwert: Sure, Tracer Gas Technologies had its birth in September of this year. My focus will be on providing training and applications assistance to industrial clients, research and development labs, and government and university labs.

Doug Glenn: What’s the best way for people to reach you?

Doug Glenn and Dave Deiwert discuss his new position as president of Tracer Gas Technologies.

Dave Deiwert: We are new and still working on the website, but in the meantime, you can reach me at my phone at (765) 685-3360 or email me at DDeiwert@gmail.com.

Doug Glenn: Dave recently published an article in the November 2024 print issue of Heat Treat Today called, “Basics of Vacuum Furnace Leak Detection, Part One.” The article includes ten tips for vacuum leak detection using a helium leak detector.

Indicators of Leaks (03:45)

We’re going to cover some of those tips today. But before we get started, what are the most common symptoms that we have a leak when operating a vacuum furnace?

Dave Deiwert: I’ve been helping these clients for a number of years. And typically, one or two things happen: So, the client is following the furnace manufacturer’s recommendations to do a periodic “leak up test,” where they pump the furnace down towards base vacuum; they isolate the pumps to look for the pressure to rise after the pump’s been isolated, and if the pressure rises at a faster rate over a test period of time, which might be ten minutes, then they determine they have a leak that they should be looking for.

It’s either during that test that they discover they have a leak that they should be looking for before it impacts quality. Or the problem develops while they’re using the furnace, and it begins to affect the quality of the product. They start to see a difference in the appearance of the product because there’s some type of contaminant gas from atmosphere, water vapor, or maybe their product is sensitive to oxygen and such. It also could be as simple as they used to pump down to base pressure for the process in “x” amount of time, and it seems like it’s taking longer.

One of those two things will get their attention, and that’s okay. Let’s look for the leaks.

Isolating the Source of the Leak (05:11)

Doug Glenn: Most of the discussion we’re going to have today is going to be on using helium leak detectors. But let’s assume you don’t have a helium leak detector. What would be your checklist of things to run through to try to isolate the source of the leak?

Dave Deiwert: My perception is that end users that only have maybe one or two furnaces might not have their own leak detector, and calling for help might be quite a pricey option. They may try to do some things on their own without the leak detector or help from somebody outside the organization.

The first thing you’re going to do is consider where most leaks typically would be on a furnace. You’re going to think of things like the door is opened and closed on every cycle of the furnace, so the gasket or O-ring type material there can get worn over time.

Or maybe while the door was open, something came to rest on the O-ring: a piece of fuzz, hair, or slag metal. Something may be there that creates a leak path when they close the door. To look at that in greater detail, they get some extra light on it and see if they can determine something there. They may go ahead and remove that O-ring and just clean it up really well. Many might put a light coating with some vacuum grease or some type on it and then reinstall it.

Of course, we recommend that you try not to use vacuum grease. That could be a whole other discussion. But many will try that and see if it’s helpful to them.

The vent valve for the system also opens up after every test. So, there’s another gasket that can get worn or dirty.

Another thing would be process gases. If they filled their furnace with some back stream with argon or something, those process gas valves can leak past the seal.

So they think about each of these things and go through them one at a time and inspect them. And if they’re not quite sure what they’re seeing, they might replace the gasket or seal and then hope that they’re successful. And if they continue to not be successful, they ultimately end up calling for help.

Somebody could get very frustrated looking for leaks if you don’t know for sure that it’s only picking up helium. It’s not reacting to Dave Deiwert’s aftershave or cologne, or something else… the fork truck that went by, or something else. I can say with 100% certainty it’s reacting to helium.

Understanding Leak Detector Technology (07:14)

Doug Glenn: I want to ask for a further explanation on the first tip in this article.You say, “Understand how your leak detector works to the point that you can confirm it is working properly.” How does a company do that?

Dave Deiwert: If you’re going to go to the expense of having a leak detector — which many should — they should understand how it works properly and how to tell that it’s working properly or not before you start spraying helium to look for leaks.

Every manufacturer of leak detectors today, and for quite a number of years, has a leak detector that will let you know whether you’re in the test mode or in a standby mode. If you ever approach somebody that is leak testing and the leak detector is in standby mode and they’re spraying helium, you can suggest, “I bet you haven’t found any leaks yet, have you? Well then, you might want to put your leak detector in test mode.”

Understanding it’s in test mode and understanding how to calibrate the leak detector are good tools to help your success in finding leaks on the system. You have to at least be familiar enough with the leak detector to understand its operation and knowing that it’s sensitive to helium and the calibrating procedure increases and supports this understanding.

Doug Glenn: That makes a lot of sense: Make sure it’s turned on.

Dave Deiwert: Right, turned on and connected to your system. If you don’t have a hose going from the leak detector to the furnace and you’re spraying helium, that’s also going to be a problem.This might sound silly, but sometimes people think, “Hey, this sounds easy. You just spray helium and look for leaks.” They may ask some person who doesn’t really have much experience, “Hey, go over and test the furnace.” They may be embarrassed to say that they don’t know how to use the leak detector, so they may give it a go. Because they don’t understand the leak detector, they might not be successful.

Doug Glenn: That leads me to my next question because I would be that guy that doesn’t really know how they work. When you’re performing a leak detection using a helium leak detector, how does that process work? Where is the leak detector? Where are you spraying the helium?

Dave Deiwert: Sure. In my career I’ve seen people choose a few different points of connection to the furnace, but you’ll find our industry that we teach people that the best place would be to connect the hose from the leak detector to point in front of the blower if they’ve got a blower on their system. If they don’t have one, it’s going to go at a connection point near the inlet of the pump of gas pumping through this system. But you want to sample that flow of gases from the furnace towards the pumps. That way, you can get a sample to the leak detector as you’re spraying the helium.

When you talk about how the leak detectors work… at every class I teach, I think it’s important to at least give enough information so that you have confidence that the leak detector can help you. How’s it sensitive to helium and why? With these leak detectors, no matter who manufactures them, typically you’ll see that inside there’s a mass spectrometer that’s tuned to the gas mass weight of a helium molecule. And because it’s dependent on the mass weight of a helium molecule, not the mass weight of oxygen, nitrogen, argon, or whatever, you can be 100% sure that when the leak detector reacts, it’s getting helium from somewhere.

I stress that because somebody could get very frustrated looking for leaks if you don’t know for sure that it’s only picking up helium. It’s not reacting to Dave Deiwert’s aftershave or cologne, or something else… the fork truck that went by, or something else. I can say with 100% certainty it’s reacting to helium.

You might be surprised how often in my career somebody said, “Dave, the leak detector’s reacting, and I haven’t even started spraying helium yet.” I will tell them helium is coming from somewhere, and it could be the tank of helium that you’ve rolled up to the furnace is spraying helium and you didn’t realize it. Maybe the spray gun is still spraying helium even though the trigger is not pulled. Maybe the regulator’s leaking.

Leak detector hooked up to vacuum furnace
Source: Dave Deiwert

And if that furnace has got a leak, it’s the whole reason you brought the leak detector over. You’re not spraying helium yet, but helium is being sprayed by the tank or the regulator. The leak detector is going to react to the helium regardless of how it got into the system. So that can be very frustrating.

Let me back up: If you know beyond the shadow of a doubt the leak detector will only respond to helium and you haven’t sprayed helium yet, you know immediately it’s coming from somewhere.That is to say, I need to figure out what’s going on there. Otherwise I might spin my wheels looking for a leak while something else is a distraction for me.

Does that make sense?

Understanding Helium (11:53)

Doug Glenn: Yes, it does. Let me ask you this, though, because I’ve never done a helium leak detection as a publisher of a magazine — we don’t have a lot of helium in this business. You’ve got this box called the helium leak detector. It’s got a hose. You connect the hose near the blower or someplace close to the vacuum pump. I assume the leak detector is sampling the air as it’s coming towards the pump or towards the blower. Correct?

Dave Deiwert: Absolutely.

Doug Glenn: Then you’re spraying helium on the outside of the furnace somewhere to see if it’s being pulled into the furnace through some hole and therefore heading towards the pump. Correct?

Dave Deiwert: Yes.

Doug Glenn: I wasn’t ever sure how that worked — whether you spray the helium inside the furnace then you’re checking around the outside of the furnace with the leak detector; I know that sounds silly, but I thought that might be how it worked. But the truth is you’re sampling the air inside, and you’re spraying helium on the outside. If that’s the case, with a canister of helium on the outside of the furnace, won’t the detector be detecting the gas because it is going from that helium canister through and into the furnace, right?

Dave Deiwert: Yes, that’s correct.

When we get into the idea of spraying helium — where does the helium go when I spray it? When I started my career way back in 1989 as a field service engineer, I was taught that helium rises because it’s the lightest gas. And so I was taught, as were many other people, to start at the top of the furnace and work your way down.

The problem with teaching that is (remember, there’s five parts per million of helium naturally in the air we breathe) that if I start spraying helium, I can tell you with 100% confidence that the air currents in the room are going to impact that helium. If you can feel the air blowing from your right towards your left, and when someone’s got a floor fan on you can be sure of it, the predominant helium you’re spraying is going to move that way. It’s going to dissipate over time, but starting somewhere methodical to spray the helium is important and to not spray too much.

Be Patient with Leak Detection! (13:14)

Doug Glenn: I did want to ask a little bit about that because in your second and third tip in this article you expressed the need to be patient when doing a leak detection. Just exactly how patient do we need to be, and why do we need to be so patient?

Dave Deiwert: Frequently throughout my career, I’ve run into people who say, “I’m not sure if I’ve got a leak, so I’m going to spray a lot of helium so I can determine it pretty quickly.” But if you spray that helium like you’re trying to dust off the equipment, you will have so much helium in the air the leak detector will definitely react if there’s a leak. However, now you have to wait forever and a day; it could be quite a while until the helium that you just sprayed all over the system and in the room dissipates before you can continue looking for a leak.

I always ask this question when I’m teaching a class with people who have been doing leak testing: “How do you set your helium spray nozzle?” The ones that’ve been doing it for quite a while will say that they’ll get a glass of water, for example, and they’ll put the spray nozzle down in the water and adjust the flow to where they get one bubble every two to three seconds. I see some variation on that, one to ten seconds. But they’ll try to meter it down. Somebody might say, “I’ll put the nozzle up to my lip and spray so I can barely feel it.”

I’ve run into people who say, “I’m not sure if I’ve got a leak, so I’m going to spray a lot of helium so I can determine it pretty quickly.” But if you spray that helium like you’re trying to dust off the equipment, you will have so much helium in the air the leak detector will definitely react if there’s a leak. However, now you have to wait forever and a day.

To those people, I’ll say, “That’s a good start. If you put that nozzle in that glass of water and it looks like a Ken and Barbie jacuzzi, you’re spending way too much helium into that.” I would meter that down to a very small amount, whether it’s a bubble every three seconds or you can barely feel it on your lip is a good place to start.

And because I made the comment that helium doesn’t necessarily rise but can go different directions based on the wind, air currents in the room, and fresh air makeup, eventually somebody says, “Where should I start?” I’ll say, “I don’t have a problem with you starting at the top of the furnace and working your way down. Be methodical.”

Some people will start at the leak detector they just hooked up because they might have put a leak in the bellows connection from the leak detector. You might start there to make sure the assembly you just did is leak tight.

But start somewhere, be methodical as you move across the system, and remember that helium can go up, down, left, back, or forward depending on what the air currents are.

Doug Glenn: I was actually going to ask you about the air currents, because I thought that was an interesting tip that you had made. In fact, I think that’s like tip four and five in this article. I think we’re dealing with air currents and things of that sort. So, we’ll skip over that, because I think you’veaddressed that.

The Dead Stick Method (16:48)

Doug Glenn: You mention an interesting thing called a “dead stick method” in tip number six. Can you explain what that is?

Dave Deiwert: I’m glad you asked that because I looked back on that later and thought I don’t think I elaborated on that enough for somebody that’s never done the dead stick method. That is a term for when you spray just a little squirt of helium away from you and the furnace, and then stop spraying. Then you’re going to rely on the residual helium that’s coming out of the tip of the nozzle for some period of time.

In my training classes, I typically have a plastic bottle that has a little right-angle nozzle on it. You may have used them back in high school in chemistry; it might have had alcohol in it. I will squirt a little helium in that plastic bottle and then screw the cap on; that will last me for two or three days at a trade show or a training event. I don’t have to squeeze the bottle. There’s enough helium coming out of the nozzle that you can detect leaks.

To demonstrate, I’ll put hair on an O-ring on a test for the leak detector. (It’s the cause of my receding hairline.) I can take that nozzle without squeezing the bottle and move it near the hair that I put in there, and it will detect it very impressively every single time, at least over the course of two to three days.

Perspective looking up into the world’s largest vacuum chamber at NASA’s facility in Sandusky, Ohio
Source: Dave Deiwert

My point of demoing that is people tend to spray away too much helium. If there’s five parts per million naturally in the air we breathe, you only need enough delta difference so that as you go past where the leak’s at you can see a reaction from the leak detector and pinpoint it.

Backtrack to if somebody sprays a lot of helium to prove they have a leak. Now they have to wait a long time for the helium to dissipate. And by the way it’s not just dissipating from the room. You’ve sprayed a lot of helium that is now feeding that leak. And as it goes through the leak path in the furnace, it expands back out in front of you. It’s got to pump away from the furnace, too. It’s also got to clear the system and go out to the pumps before you get back to baseline so that you can continue leak checking.

Therefore, if you spray just very small amounts,, you have to get close to where the leak is before you start to get a response. This way you have less concern of helium drifting to the opposite side of the furnace and going through a leak path there — that can really distract. You may think you’re near the leak, but it’s really on the other side of the furnace because you’ve sprayed way too much helium.

Spraying little amounts might make you feel like it’s taking longer. But the fact is, when you start to get a reaction at the leak detector, you can be comfortable that you’re getting close to the where the leak is.

Doug Glenn: If you know you’re in a room with air currents in it (let’s just say there’s a flow of some sort from left to right), does it make sense to always start downwind, and then work your way back across the system?

Dave Deiwert: Yes. If I can feel a fan — Joe’s got his fan on because it’s keeping him cool, and it’s blowing over towards where I’m leak testing, I might say, “Hey Joe, could you turn your fan off a little bit while I’m testing?” He may say, “No, it’s making me comfortable.” All right, now I’ve got to work with that. I know that I can feel the air currents moving from my right towards my left. So, yes, starting downwind and working my way up could be helpful. You want to pay attention to what the air is doing if you can tell. It may be a very calm environment, and you’re not sure what the air currents are doing; just be methodical. Pick somewhere to start in the furnace.

Here’s something else about spraying helium: Once you think you know where the leak is at, every time you put the spray nozzle there you should get the same response. You spray the helium, you get a response, you stop spraying and wait until it drops back to baseline, and then you go back to where you think the leak is. If that’s where the leak is, every time you put the probe there, you should get the same response time at the leak detector. If even one time you put the spray gun there and don’t get a response or not nearly the same, then that’s not where the leak is at. Yeah, you should know beyond a shadow of a doubt when you pinpoint the leak.

Doug Glenn: How often do you see more than one leak at a time? Let’s say you isolate a leak, you think you got it, then say you take the gasket off or whatever you do, do the test again, and there’s still a leak.How often does that happen?

Dave Deiwert: It happens most of the time. When I was a field service engineer and somebody called me in to help, I almost never found one leak. That tells me they were working with one leak that maybe wasn’t large enough to affect their quality or the cycle time, and they were living with it. And the day comes where they have a leak that gets their attention or the leak got larger. It can be more challenging if you’ve got more than one leak. It’s a short-lived celebration when you think you found a leak and then you go to start the process, and, oh, it looks like you still have a leak. That wasn’t the one. So, you might make a case for looking to see if you can pinpoint another leak while you’re in the leak testing mode.

Doug Glenn displays the cover of the November 2024 issue of Heat Treat Today, in which Dave Deiwert’s article, “Basics of Vacuum Furnace Leak Detection, Pt 1,” is featured.

Saving on Helium Gas (21:35)

Doug Glenn: Besides the fact that a helium leak detector can save you all kinds of time because typically you can find a leak faster with a helium leak detector then in a process of elimination, you also mentioned a tip for saving money regarding the mixing of the gas. Could you elaborate on that and any other cost savings tips?

Dave Deiwert: I already mentioned that people tend to spray way too much helium at least until they’re sensitive to that concern and cut back. But when they buy the tanks of helium, they’re buying 100% helium. And remember my comment that you just need enough delta increase in the helium that you’re applying to where the leaks at to be able to pinpoint it. The possibility that you could buy your tanks of helium at a lesser percentage, maybe 25% helium and 75% nitrogen, would help you save on some helium and help your efforts to not be spraying too much.

People have not been saying that in this industry, and so that can make folks nervous. “I don’t know, Dave. We’ve never done that before. I’ve never heard anybody else say that before.” I suggest if you are going through a lot of helium, you could cut down how much helium you’re spraying. You could save some significant money, especially these larger facilities with many furnaces and so forth. Give it a try. Buy one tank of it with a mix gas and pick something that you’re comfortable trying, whether it be 25% or 50% helium and buy one bottle. And the next time you test your furnace and find a leak, then try to look at that leak with the lower percentage helium and prove to yourself whether using a lower percentage of helium is going to save you money.

Doug Glenn: You’re suggesting people get themselves comfortable with it, use their 100% until they find the leak, and then try the lower helium.

Dave Deiwert: When they show the proof to themselves, that they can still have the capability to find leaks like that, then they could save a little money. Plus, there’s the added benefit of not spraying so much helium and having to wait as long for the area to clear up before you can start spraying again to continue to pinpoint a leak.

Doug Glenn: And that would save you additional time. Dave, thank you very much. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?

Dave Deiwert: Only that if you know you’ve got a leak in the system — it failed the leak up test or quality or whatever, you sprayed it around the entire system, and you can’t find any leaks — then you’re probably looking at an internal leak most likely past the seat of a valve. Or maybe you’ve got a vent valve that’s leaking past the seat, but your plumbing to that vent valve maybe goes out of the building, so you don’t really have an easy access to spray helium past that.

For example, with an argon valve, you may need to disconnect the argon supply from that valve so you can get access to that side of the valve to spray helium to see if you can detect a leak past the seat of that valve.

Doug Glenn: Dave, thanks very much, I appreciate it. I’m sure we’ll be talking again. I know vacuum leak detection is an important thing.

About The Guest

Dave Deiwert
President
Tracer Gas Technologies

Dave Deiwert has over 35 years of technical experience in industrial leak detection gained from his time at Vacuum Instruments Corp., Agilent Vacuum Technologies (Varian Vacuum), Edwards Vacuum, and Pfeiffer Vacuum. He leverages this experience by providing leak detection and vacuum technology training and consulting services as the owner and president of Tracer Gas Technologies.

Contact Dave at ddeiwert@gmail.com.

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Under Pressure? Here’s a Stress Relief Round Up

December 4, 2024 / Manufacturing Heat Treat Technical Content, STRESS RELIEVING TECHNICAL CONTENT

Did you know that November 6 was National Stress Awareness Day? It seems an appropriate designation to cover the days and weeks that follow Election Day as well as those leading up to the holidays. For many who are well aware of the stress of the events of the season, Heat Treat Today wants to help with a different kind of stress relief.

Today we’re highlighting technical content that we’ve published over the last couple of years about stress relieving processes. Read an overview about stress relieving stainless steel components, listen to a Lunch & Learn dialogue about this underrated process, and explore a mechanical testing method for measuring material strength.

Stainless Corrosion

It is critical to provide things like stainless steel appliances and the Tesla truck with proper maintenance to keep the corrosion resistance and appearance lasting as long as possible.

Stainless steel shines in our kitchens and is becoming more popular in auto showrooms, mostly because of the promise that it is corrosion resistant. What most people don’t realize is that stainless steel will rust in a lot of circumstances. Sarah Jordan explores how stainless steel can be compromised by improper heat treatment and the steps heat treaters can take to prevent corrosion:

“Improper heat treating can also contribute to stress corrosion cracking. When material is quenched, it can cause residual stresses that, if not relieved, can become an issue.

“Corrosion in stainless steel can often be traced to improper heat treatment. When stainless steel is heated between 842–1562°F (450–850°C), chromium carbides can form at the grain boundaries, depleting the surrounding areas of chromium and making them susceptible to corrosion.”

To read the article in full, click here.

Heat Treat Radio #88: Lunch & Learn — 3 Most Underrated Processes

Click on the image to hear this episode of Heat Treat Radio and read the transcript.

In this Lunch & Learn episode from Heat Treat Radio, Dave Mouilleseaux discusses the three most underrated heat treat processes, including stress relieving manufactured components. If a comprehensive analysis of a heat treat operation needs to be performed on a manufactured component, such as a gear or a shaft, it is necessary to take into consideration any prior existing stresses in the part and what effect that has on the part.

The detrimental effects of not having stress relieved
Source: pixabay

“Many times during the course of my career, I’ve had a customer come to me and say, ‘The part I gave you was correct, and you’ve given it back to me and then fill-in-the-blank. It’s warped, it’s changed size, it’s shrunk, all of those things.’

“What have you done in your heat treating process?” asked Mouilleseaux. “You have to back up all the way to the beginning of how this part was manufactured and deal with all of those component steps in order to answer that question properly. Stress relieving is one of the answers. It’s not the answer. It’s not the only answer, but it is one of them that has to be considered.”

To listen to this episode of Lunch & Learn, click here.

Indentation Plastometry

Photograph of the Hardox steel samples, with and without the WC insert attached, showing high levels of oxidation following from the brazing process.
Source: Plastometrex

Mechanical testing is a standard production step in heat treating operations, but conventional methods of testing don’t always yield stress values consistent with the testing calculations.

Indentation plastometry allows users to obtain material strength characteristics in a way that is faster, cheaper, and simpler than conventional mechanical testing procedures. James Dean explores this novel mechanical testing method developed to infuse efficiency and accuracy into the process.

“The testing process is fully automated and involves three simple steps. The first is the creation of an indent using the indentation plastometer which is a custom-built, macromechanical test machine. The second is measurement of the residual profile shape using an integrated stylus profilometer.

“The third is the analysis of the profile shape in a proprietary software package called SEMPID, which converts the indentation test data into stress-strain curves that are comparable to those that would be measured using conventional mechanical testing methods. The entire procedure takes just a few minutes, and the surface preparation requirements are minimal.”

To read this article in full, click here.

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Heat Treat Radio #114: Decarbonization Demystified at IHEA’s SUMMIT

October 1, 2024 / HEAT TREAT NEWS, HEAT TREAT NEWS INDUSTRIES, HEAT TREAT RADIO

Listen as Jeff Rafter, vice president of sales and marketing at Selas Heat Technology and current IHEA president, discusses the upcoming IHEA Decarbonization SUMIMIT with Doug Glenn. Scheduled for October 28-30 in Indianapolis, Indiana, the summit will address the challenges and opportunities of decarbonization for manufacturers. Jeff highlights IHEA’s nearly 100-year history in industry education. The event will feature keynote speakers from the DOE, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and John Deere, with a mix of technical and business content aiming to provide practical strategies for energy management and sustainability. Learn more in this episode of Heat Treat Radio, and learn more about this episode sponsor, IHEA, and their event at summit.ihea.org.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

HTT · Heat Treat Radio #114: Decarbonization Demystified at IHEA’s SUMMIT

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

The IHEA Decarbonization Summit (01:03)

Doug Glenn: Jeff, when and where is the summit? And what was the driving force behind deciding to do this event?

Jeff Rafter: The IHEA Decarbonization SUMMIT will be at the Conrad Hotel in Indianapolis, Indiana, beginning on Monday, October 28, and ending Wednesday, October 30.

The drive to create this event arose because the IHEA membership had often commented on, and lamented, the frequent inquiries they get from the client base across all sectors of manufacturing; clients are looking for clarification on the ongoing changes of the U.S. energy infrastructure and, specifically, how to manage the requirement to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

There is a lot that is changing quickly in the U.S. energy infrastructure around renewables, electrification, and low carbon fuels. he IHEA board felt that it was essential to assist manufacturing members by trying to clarify these topics in an interesting event that presented the information objectively and provided a diverse array of all the decarbonization pathways available to manufacturers today.

IHEA’s Qualifications (02:36)

Doug Glenn: For those who might not know what IHEA is, what makes it uniquely qualified to present such a summit?

Jeff Rafter: I am proud to say that IHEA is a very unique organization. Many trade organizations do not have the long-standing success in supporting members that this organization has. The composition of IHEA, which is close to 100 years old, was originally made up of heating appliance and heating component manufacturers, who have spent most of our history focused on industry education as a service to all the member companies.

We felt that this was the perfect organization to take up the topic of sustainability and decarbonization because we are education focused. From that background and that bias, we are leveraging thousands of years of experience over a broad array of manufacturing options from traditional fossil fuels through electrification. Our member companies provide a very strong basis to deliver real-world examples of how to deal with reducing CO₂ emissions.

Doug Glenn: And if I am remembering correctly, IHEA actually has a standing history of cooperation and working with the DOE on different things in the past, correct?

Jeff Rafter: Very good point, Doug. If you look back in history, before “CO₂ reduction” and “decarbonization” became buzzwords, we spent a lot of similar efforts working with government organizations, research laboratories, and third-party organizations around topics of NOx reduction and trying to create a cleaner basis of industrial, manufacturing, and energy. In addition, we have always spent our time helping with business concerns regarding efficiency, not only operating successfully heating processes and appliances, but also making manufacturing more cost effective.

Keynote Speakers (04:44)

Doug Glenn: And speaking of the DOE, I see that there are some pretty high-profile speakers coming. The keynote speaker is Dr. Avi Shultz, from the U.S. DOE, and he is on the Industrial Decarbonization Initiative. Other speakers include Paulomi Nandy from Oak Ridge National Lab, Jeff Kaman from John Deere, and Tim Hill from Nucor. Can you give us a sense of what these folks will be talking about?

Dr. Avi Shultz
Director
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
The Industrial Efficiency & Decarbonization Office (IEDO)

Jeff Rafter: Doug, we are very excited to have the diverse mix of speakers that will make up the summit presentations. With Dr. Schultz and Miss Nandy, we are very excited to be providing a third-party opinion — government organizations and research laboratories — and they will be presenting on their views of the trends for the future of sustainability and decarbonization.

When we move to some of the other presenters like Tim Hill from Nucor and Mr. Kaman from John Deere, we also wanted members and attendees to take away from the summit real-world experience. These are not imagined or planned changes. We wanted companies that had actual experience with decarbonization — who had even taken actions towards net-zero positions — to share with attendees exactly how they approached the challenges.

Because, of course, some of the issues around sustainability are that it comes at a cost.

And how do you fund that? How do you research that? Where do you look for grants, and how do you make the business case towards decarbonization or any sustainability action for that matter?

Finally, adding to those two bodies of participants, we have a number of presenters speaking about real-world solutions today. IHEA’s view on decarbonization and sustainability is that there is a very broad set of pathways that you can take today with inexpensive, readily available technologies all the way out to longer term solutions like full electrification of processes.

There is more than one way to approach this challenge and do the responsible thing in manufacturing, which is to address our CO₂ production globally.

Is Electrification the Only Answer? (07:25)

Doug Glenn: You mentioned electrification. When people hear decarbonization or sustainability, they often think electrification. There may be a lot of people listening saying, “I am primarily combustion. Should I be going?” Are only electrification solutions going to be presented? Or are combustion solutions going to be presented as well to help with the decarbonization?

Jeff Rafter: The answer to that question is, “Yes, you should be going, regardless of whether your focus and your background is in traditional fossil fuel combustion or electrification.”

The summit will contain a very balanced approach of different technologies, presented with no bias. The goal of this summit is providing education to help business leaders make better decisions around their energy management and their environmental concerns.

With that said, when we look at the body of what is available in the agenda, electrification is an important topic. But as a lot of people recognize, some portions of electrification are just relocating to a different fossil fuel further away from the point of use whilst other electrification options linked to renewable energy sources truly can come close to net-zero production of CO₂.

IHEA’s view is that there are many sustainability pathways that we can all investigate or pursue.

Some pathways maintain fossil fuel basis. Some industrial processes will be challenged to move to an electric heating source. And then for other processes, electrification is the cat’s meow. So it is that broad sweep of diverse technologies that everyone needs to be educated on to make better decisions when the time comes.

Who Should Attend the Summit? (09:21)

Doug Glenn: How technical will the summit be; do I need to know heavy engineering, metallurgy, and things of that sort? And who should come?

Jeff Rafter: Traditionally, a lot of IHEA’s educational content has been directed at a technical audience; it was technical education about how various energy sources and heating appliances work, how to comply to code, and how to approach the application of that equipment safely. In this particular summit, we have changed course a bit in that we did not want this event to be a technical conference.

The idea of this summit was to make it a business conference because that is where most of the challenges exist when we look at sustainability efforts.

The content that will be presented is a pleasant mix of some technical topics because we have to get a rudimentary understanding of how these different technologies work. However, we are spending just as much time in the presentations addressing business concerns: How do you fund these various actions? Where can you find available grants? What are real-world examples of how other companies have approached sustainability or have begun an initiative internally? How do you get the support and the decision-making decided while moving in the right direction? When you look at the agenda that will be posted on the IHEA website, you will see that the topics range broadly from some technology presentations to real-world business concerns and how to make those business decisions.

Agenda for IHEA Decarburization Summitt, Monday – Wednesday, October 28-30, 2024, in Indianapolis, Indiana

Doug Glenn: How much fun have you had putting this summit together?

Jeff Rafter: I would happily report it has been a tremendous team effort.

I am very proud to say that a lot of IHEA member companies and third parties have stepped up to help us construct this event. We are really looking forward to it being a valuable event that provides a lot of information and important takeaways for participants.

Doug Glenn: I know you have put a lot of work into it. I have watched you do this over the last year and a half, and you have done a great job coordinating it.

Closing Remarks (12:34)

Jeff Rafter: I would just like to say in closing, for anyone who is thinking about coming to the IHEA Decarbonization Summit, please do. This is a very important topic for manufacturers, and you really need to take the approach of not waiting. It is time to get in front of changes in our energy infrastructure and the need to decarbonize some manufacturing processes. This is a great way to get educated and start your plan.

Doug Glenn: And I did remember one other motivation: If you are looking to stay at the hotel where the summit is held, the cutoff date for the hotel (you can still get into the summit even if you do not hit this cutoff date) is October 7th. So anyhow, appreciate it. Jeff, thanks very much for your time.

About The Guest

Jeff Rafter
Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Selas Heat Technology Company, LLC
Source: Selas Heat Technology

Jeff Rafter is vice president of sales and marketing for Selas Heat Technology in Streetsboro, Ohio, and has a rich history in the combustion industry, including Maxon Corporation. Jeff has 31 years of industrial experience in sales, research and development, and marketing; combustion application expertise in process heating, metals, refining, and power generation; and 13 years of service on NFPA 86 committee. He holds patents for ultra-low NOx burner design. Additionally, his company, Selas, is an IHEA member, and Jeff is the current president of IHEA as well as one of the driving forces/coordinators behind the upcoming Decarbonization Summit at the Conrad Hotel in Indianapolis, October 28-30.

Contact Jeff at jrafter@selas.com .

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Heat Treat Radio #113: NIST and CMMC: What Heat Treaters Need To Know

September 19, 2024 / CYBERSECURITY, HEAT TREAT RADIO

Joe Coleman, cybersecurity officer at Bluestreak Compliance, discusses critical aspects of NIST 800-171 and CMMC with host Doug Glenn. Joe touches on how to become compliant, how long compliance takes, compliance pricing, and the limitations companies may face if not compliant. Learn more in this episode of Heat Treat Radio.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

HTT · Heat Treat Radio #113: NIST and CMMC: What Heat Treaters Need to Know

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

What Is CMMC? (03:34)

Doug Glenn: Let’s jump in. Cybersecurity, while it’s not unique to heat treaters, is across all manufacturing sectors. But there are some unique elements of it that tie into the metal treating industry.

Let’s start with some basic definitions for those who don’t know: What is CMMC and what’s the purpose of it?

Joe Coleman: CMMC stands for Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification. And we’re currently on version 2.0. It’s a verification program to ensure that defense contractors and subcontractors are able to protect sensitive information from the DoD (Department of Defense). That includes FCI, which is federal contract information, and CUI — or some people call it “coui” — which is Controlled Unclassified Information.

Cybersecurity acronyms “cheat sheet” available as a free download. Click on the image for a link.

It’s going to affect about 300,000 companies in the U.S. Also, it’s going to start impacting companies later this year or early next year. That’s when it’s said to be fully released, and they’ll start adding it to contracts and RFQs and things like that.

Doug Glenn: So, in CMMC 2.0 version, the DoD is asking companies, “Do you comply with CMMC 2.0?”

Joe Coleman: Rather, it is saying you must comply by 2025 and at a certain level; there are three levels.

Doug Glenn: What are these requirements based on?

Joe Coleman: DFARS 252.204-7012 was implemented in 2016. In it, they were saying that people must be NIST 800-171 compliant by December 2017. If you’re not, you’re way behind the ball. They just haven’t pushed it until recently. Now they’re really pushing it. It’s based on NIST 800-171 recommendations — that’s Rev 2, and a subset of NIST 800-172.

Doug Glenn: You mentioned DFARS. Can you just briefly explain that?

Joe Coleman: DFARS is Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement.

Doug Glenn: Also, I’m kind of curious about this: Who’s actually pushing it? Is it the Department of Defense, or is it government in general, or is it controlled by (kind of like Nadcap and things of that sort) an independent organization outside of the federal government?

Joe Coleman: No, CMMC does cover other things, but it’s mostly by the DoD. They are the ones pushing itbecause of foreign adversaries stealing our information and ransomware attacks and things like that.

Doug Glenn: Right, okay. So that’s CMMC 2.0. Is NIST 800-171 is a sub part of that, or is NIST 800-171 something different?

Joe Coleman: That’s something different. NIST 800-171 is published by the National Institute of Standards and Technologies. DoD doesn’t have a lot to do with NIST. They are two different standards; the DoD is just borrowing NIST 800-171 for CMMC’s requirements.

Doug Glenn: I see. They’re using NIST’s package that’s already there as part of their requirement.

I think you’ve already kind of hit on it, but let’s just be explicit about it. What started the push by the DoD to require CMMC or require any type of enhanced security?

Joe Coleman: The DoD finally realized just how vulnerable defense contractors are and how vulnerable their computer systems and networks are to cyberattacks and to sensitive information being leaked by the DoD or contractors, that kind of thing. They’re trying to pull everything together to improve national security and to help secure this important data.

Doug Glenn: So, in a sense, it’s really the DoD just trying to cover their rear end, so to speak, and protect sensitive, national defense type information.

What Is DFARS? (08:45)

We talked about DFARs briefly. I’ve heard a DFARS interim rule mentioned. What is that?

Joe Coleman: That came about in November of 2020. It plays along with the DFARS 7012 — 252.204-7012. They came up with three new clauses to improve how cybersecurity is handled and enforced.

The first one is clause 252.204-7019. It mandates that you when you do your assessment: you come up with an assessment score based on 110 controls, and your score can be from a positive 110 (the perfect score) to a negative 203. That score needs to be turned into the SPRS, the Supplier Performance Risk System, so other companies can see what your score is.

So, 7019 mandates that you do turn in your score and that it can be no older than three years old. They are requesting that if they say you’re DFARS-required on a contract, things like that, you need to be NIST 800-171 compliant.

The next one is 252.204-7020. And that one states that you have to give full access to your company — your internet system, your IT, all of your information, and your employees, if they decide to come in and do a medium or high assessment or just an audit. You will have to turn over that control to them.

Doug Glenn: Who is “them” in this case?

Joe Coleman: It would be a DoD official.

Doug Glenn: All right.

Levels of Assessment (10:59)

Joe Coleman: There are three different levels of assessments that can be done under NIST 800-171. There is a basic level which you attest yourself. It’s all self-attestation for NIST 800-171. There’s a medium level which means you have to have a DoD official come in and do your final assessment. And then there’s a high, which you also need a DoD official to come in and do that. The majority of them are basics, which you can self-attest to.

Doug Glenn: How does a company know if they need to even have the CMMC?

Joe Coleman: If your company is a defense contractor, subcontractor, vendor/supplier, or if you’re in the DIB (the defense industrial base), you will need to be compliant if you process, store, transmit, or handle FCI or CUI in any way. If you handle CUI or FCI, you must become CMMC certified at one level or another.

Doug Glenn: Let’s just take an example. Say I’m almost third tier down in a supply chain, and the guy I’m doing business for is obviously doing defense work. Do I need to be CMMC certified at that point, even on the basic level?

Joe Coleman: Well, it depends on what type of data you’re handling. There is a flow down process. It starts with the prime contractor. Then it goes to the contractor and then on down the line. And if you are dealing with CUI or FCI, you need to have that same certification level as your client or as your contractor.

Doug Glenn: Would my client in that case, the person I’m doing business with, would it be incumbent upon them to tell me that I am dealing with FCI or CUI?

Joe Coleman: Yes. It would be in your contract.

Doug Glenn: If someone listening has a specific question about whether they’re required, I’m sure they could contact you and you could probably help them on that just to make sure.

Joe Coleman: Anytime. I also have an ebook that I made that is ready to be sent out, so I can always send them a free copy of that.

Doug Glenn: Now, I think you’ve already answered this question, but how many maturity levels are in CMMC and what are they?

Joe Coleman: A little, there are three levels. There is level one, which is the foundational level, and that is for contractors or vendors or suppliers that deal with only FCI. They do not deal with CUI. So, there’s a much smaller set of requirements for level one. And about 60% of the 300,000 companies will be going for level one.

Then there’s level two, which is advanced, and that is for contractors and vendors and suppliers that deal with CUI in any way. It can come in an email and leave. But as long as they have access to CUI, they need to be at least a level two certification. And there are about 80,000 companies that are going to be impacted by that of the 300,000.

Level three is expert, and level three is based on the 110 controls in NIST 800-171 plus a subset of controls that are in 800-172. Level two mirrors NIST 800-171. It’s borrowing all the requirements from NIST 800-171, enhancing them a little bit, and putting them into CMMC. So, there are a few more hoops you have to jump through to be CMMC certified.

Doug Glenn: We’ve talked about two different sets of levels. We talked about a basic, medium, and high. And then we talked about level one, two, and three. Are these things the same or are they different? Can you help me understand the difference between those?

Joe Coleman: The basic, medium, and high is an assessment level that assesses your whole system and facility, and that’s based on NIST 800-171. CMMC, you have three different maturity levels, and that’s level one, level two, and level three.

Doug Glenn: When you say maturity levels, that shows the degree to which your company has gone to implement these things.

Joe Coleman: Yes. It is a certification.

On CMMC level one, you can self-attest your own certification. Level two and level three, you will have to have it’s called C3PAO (or a CMMC third-party assessment organization). They will have to come in and do your final assessment. Bluestreak Compliance can take you all the way to that assessment audit ready. But then you’ll have to have a C3PAO come in and do the final audit and the certification level.

Doug Glenn: That was going to be one of my questions because you guys mentioned that you’re a registered practitioner organization. You don’t actually do the assessments, but you can get everybody up to the door, right? You prepare them for it?

Joe Coleman: Yes. You would need a CMMC certified assessor to do that.

Doug Glenn: All right. And when is all this going to be required? Right now, it’s not required but it will be required?

CMMC: Mark Your Calendars! Companies will need to prepare for the eventual implementation of CMMC level two certification. A phased rollout is planned to simplify the process; however, a shortage of registered practitioner organizations (RPO) may lead to a backlog.

Joe Coleman: CMMC is not required currently. It’s in the last phase of being released for approval. Either late this year or early next year, it’s going to be a phased rollout. Later this year or early next year, you’re going to have phase one, which is that if you need to be level one certified, you will need to become certified right away. That’s the one you can self-attest.

Six months after that, they’re going to start requiring that CMMC level two is implemented. This means you’ll have to go through the process of getting a C3PAO. And that’s when it comes time to hire an RPO (registered practitioner organization), because they’ve got the training and the certification to get you there.

Now, one thing on the C3PAO: there are currently only 54 C3PAOs in the entire country. So, there’s going to be a huge backlog. You could be talking a year backlog, so plan accordingly.

Finally, at level three, an enhanced version of level two because it has more requirements, you’re also requiring a C3PAO for certification.

What’s Involved in Becoming NIST Compliant? (21:14)

Doug Glenn: Joe, let’s talk for a second about the process, if you will. What’s involved in becoming CMMC certified?

Joe Coleman: That all depends on if you are NIST 800-171 compliant already. If you are not NIST compliant already, you need to get NIST compliant as soon as possible. That has a big impact on your CMMC implementation.

Doug Glenn: Can you address that then: What do you have to do to become NIST compliant?

Joe Coleman: To become compliant, you have to do an assessment on your network and your facilities to come up with an assessment score. So, it’s the same as CMMC.

Then, you will have to do a gap analysis. You will come up with a POAM list (a plan of action and milestones); that is your to-do list based on your assessment, your shortcomings, or what you’re not compliant to. And you’ll need to come up with a system security plan (an SSP). That’s mandatory; you cannot be compliant without an SSP.

Once you get your SSP and your POAM list, then you need to take your score, your beginning score/baseline score, and submit that to the SPRS. And that is the library that holds all of the scores and shows your level.

From there, you start remediating and implementing your POAM list. But that also includes coming up with policies and procedures, plans, and a lot of documentation — everything gets documented based on where you stand and where you’re going, until the end when you do your final score.

Now, the SSP is a living document. It’s going to constantly change. If you have a change in your network, a major change, you’ll need to go in and update that right away.

How To Become CMMC Compliant? (23:46)

Doug Glenn: So that’s how you get to be NIST compliant. For CMMC, is there more to it?

Joe Coleman: There’s a few more requirements in CMMC, but the major difference is that with NIST 800-171 it’s all self-attestation. CMMC you will need to have a C3PAO.

Doug Glenn: That is, somebody’s going to need an outside validator, so to speak.

Joe Coleman: And they’re very expensive.

Now, another reason they came up with CMMC is because people were saying that they were compliant to NIST 800-171, and they really weren’t. That gets into the False Claims Act and things like that. They really go after people that do that.

Doug Glenn: Yeah. Any sense of the time frame for either becoming NIST compliant and/or CMMC compliant?

Joe Coleman: If you are not NIST compliant yet, that can take up to 6 to 12 months. I’ve seen it take more. You can do CMMC and NIST together if you need to because you’re using the same documents. If you’re not NIST compliant, that can take up to 18 months or more. If you are NIST compliant already, you’re talking 6 to 12 months to be CMMC certified.

Joe discusses the limitations of not being NIST compliant.

Doug Glenn: Okay. You just alluded to it, but I just want to make it clear. Can you do them both at the same time in parallel tracks?

Joe Coleman: Yeah, I’m working with clients that are not currently NIST compliant. So, we’re just rolling it into one using the same documents. It’s just that we’ll have to have a different assessor at the end.

Doug Glenn: Let’s say a company just decides they’re not going to be either NIST or CMMC compliant. You can still be a company, right?

Joe Coleman: Oh yeah, you can still do business; you just can’t do business with the DoD. A lot of companies base it on how much of their workload or how much of their business percentage is based on DoD work or from a contractor or subcontractor. If it’s 1%, 2%, 3%, 5%, you need to take a good hard look and say, is it worth putting a lot of money into?

Cost of Certification (26:52)

Doug Glenn: So, they can still be in business and doing well, but they just can’t do any DoD work. So, any ballpark figures? And I realize this probably varies widely depending on the size of the company and everything, but any ballpark sense of how much change we’re talking about here?

Joe Coleman: There’s no official word from the DoD on this, but there are some guesses out there. For NIST 800-171 compliance, depending on your current cybersecurity program that you currently have and how involved it is, I’ve seen it from $15,000 to $60,000.

Doug Glenn: Okay. That’s just for NIST?

Joe Coleman: Just for NIST. For CMMC, and again depending on if you’re NIST compliant, if you are not NIST compliant you’re going to do them together, it could be over $200K (probably easily) to become CMMC certified because you’re also becoming NIST compliant.

Doug Glenn: I’m curious. How come it’s going to cost you maybe 3x as much?

Joe Coleman: One of the main reasons is that with CMMC, you’ll want to hire a registered practitioner organization to guide you through the process and to do the documentation for you. The other is the C3PAO. There are only 54, and they can name their own price.

I can imagine it’s going to be over $100K just for the final assessment.

Doug Glenn: Right, that’s helpful. I think that gives everybody a pretty good sense of what we’re talking about here with CMMC 2.0 and NIST 800-171.

What Can a Registered Practitioner Do for You? (29:02)

Your division of your company, which is Bluestreak Compliance (you’ve already mentioned you’re a registered practitioner), can you give a brief summary of what it is? What do you guys bring to the table?

Joe Coleman: A registered practitioner organization has been certified by the Cyber Accreditation Board (Cyber AB), or CMMC accreditation body. A registered practitioner organization (RPO) works with and hires RPs (registered practitioners) or RPAs (registered practitioner advanced). I happen to be an RPA. And we’ve gone through all the training that we need to have so that the Cyber AB says, okay, you are qualified to do this.

So, when I quote a job, I usually quote it two different ways. One way is just guiding you through the process, so you’re going to do all the heavy lifting. I can supply you with templates and things like that for your documentation and guide you through each step. Or I can quote it where we manage the whole process. We will do all your documentation for you.

Joe Coleman: “You’re going to have at least 1 or 2 full-time employees doing nothing but this.”

Your team will have to be involved in the implementation process. And that’s true both ways. But we normally quote it two different ways, and they choose which one they want based on their budget and things like that.

Doug Glenn: It sounds like what you’re bringing to the table is the ability to get that company from where they are now, wherever they self-assess to start with, up to the point where they can bring in one of the third-party auditors and actually have a reasonable shot at passing the CMMC 2.0 assessment.

Joe Coleman: Correct. And it’s going to take a lot of input from the client or from the companies, too, because you’re going to have at least 1 or 2 full-time employees doing nothing but this. You’ve got to build that cost into it.

That’s what I tell people when we say we can quote it either guiding you or leading the project. It’s not as much work if I am leading the project. But if I’m not leading the project, you’re going to need a team of people to do this. It’s a lot of work.

Cybersecurity Areas To Be Aware Of (31:48)

Doug Glenn: I’m not sure there is an easy answer to this question, but can you give a list of top 3 to 4, or 4 to 5, areas that a company needs to look at when they start doing the NIST and CMMC checklists? Where do you see most companies falling down, or what are the areas they need to be aware of?

Joe Coleman: A lot of the smaller companies do not have a robust cybersecurity program. That is going to be a big pitfall. That’s going to be a big jump for them, not just the work that they have to put into it, but the expense; a lot of small companies just can’t afford that.

Doug Glenn: So, for example, what does that program involve? I mean, is it best practices for handling emails?

Joe Coleman: Everything.

Doug Glenn: What are some of those things?

Joe Coleman: Some of the things are making sure that your network is totally secure and locked down, firewalls. Along with that, you’re going to need endpoint protection on all your devices, mobile device manager. You’re going to have to track every device that has access or could have access to CUI. You have to have a full inventory of that. Your IT system has to be locked down.

Now, this also includes your facility; it includes physical security. That’s talking about your door locks, your alarm systems, things that are going to protect CUI. Camera systems, your server rooms have to be locked down. It’s a lot of physical security, too.

Doug Glenn: Interesting. As well as the protocols for how you handle emails, how data is transferred, where it’s stored, and backups, stuff like that?

Joe Coleman: Yes. And you need to have a policy and a procedure for each one of those. They have to be fully documented every step of the way.

Doug Glenn: Wow. Okay. Sounds like fun, Joe.

Joe Coleman: It is. I enjoy it, but it’s a lot of work.

Doug Glenn: I’m glad somebody enjoys it. I think I’d be swinging from a rope somewhere; you know?

Joe Coleman: I eat, sleep, and drink it.

Doug Glenn: Well, that’s good, I appreciate it. The columns and things that you’ve written for our publication have been helpful to people, I know. And I think this podcast will also be helpful to them. But do you know, for those who are listening and might be attending Furnaces North America, do you know when your talk is?

Joe Coleman: It’s going to be on the 16th at 8:50 a.m., and it’s in room 222.

Doug Glenn: All right.

All right, Joe. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. We’ll look forward to more of your input.

Thanks everyone for listening.

About The Guest

Joe Coleman
Cyber Security Officer
Bluestreak Consulting

Joe Coleman is the cybersecurity officer at Bluestreak Compliance, which is a division of Bluestreak | Bright AM™. Joe has over 35 years of diverse manufacturing and engineering experience. His background includes extensive training in cybersecurity, a career as a machinist, machining manager, and an early additive manufacturing (AM) pioneer. Joe will be speaking at the Furnaces North America (FNA 2024) convention, presenting on DFARS, NIST 800-171, and CMMC 2.0.

Contact Joe at joe.coleman@go-throughput.com.

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Heat Treat Radio #113: NIST and CMMC: What Heat Treaters Need To Know Read More »

Heat Treat Radio #112: Lunch & Learn: How To Use a Hardenability Chart

August 15, 2024 / HARDENING TECHNICAL CONTENT, HEAT TREAT RADIO, QUENCHING TECHNICAL CONTENT

In this episode of Heat Treat Radio, Doug Glenn discusses the hardenability of materials with guest Michael Mouilleseaux, general manager at Erie Steel LTD. Michael walks us through how to interpret hardenability charts and provides detailed insights on reading these charts, including addressing the importance of understanding the nuances of complicated part geometry.

Below, you can watch the video, listen to the podcast by clicking on the audio play button, or read an edited transcript.

HTT · Lunch & Learn: How To Use a Hardenability Chart

The following transcript has been edited for your reading enjoyment.

Understanding a Hardenability Chart (01:59)

Doug Glenn: What I’d like to do is talk through this chart and learn how to read this a little bit better. And I’d like to ask questions about it because I’m not familiar with this, and I’m sure there are going to be some listeners and viewers who aren’t familiar with it. This will be just a quick tutorial on how to read these charts.

Go to the upper, right-hand corner. First off, SAE 4320H is the grade of the steel that we’re talking about?

The Heat Treat Lunch & Learn crew: Doug Glenn, Publisher of Heat Treat Today; Michael Mouilleseaux, General Manager at Erie Steel LTD.; Bethany Leone, Managing Editor of Heat Treat Today
Use this chart to follow along with the conversation.
Source of chart: Erie Steel, Ltd.

Michael Mouilleseaux: Correct.

Doug Glenn: Then the table right below that you’ve got percentage C (carbon). Is Mn manganese?

Michael Mouilleseaux: Manganese.

Doug Glenn: Thank you very much. Silicon, nickel, chrome, moly. My question is about those ranges. Is this basically saying the percentage carbon on the far left in 4320H goes anywhere from 0.17–0.23?

Michael Mouilleseaux: That is correct.

Doug Glenn: Okay. So that’s variability right there. All of those are basically telling you what the ranges are in those alloys in this grade of steel?

Michael Mouilleseaux: That is correct.

Doug Glenn: Then you go down to the top columns of this table below, and it says “Approximate diameter of rounds with same as quenched HRC in inches.” Right?

Approximate diameter of rounds with same as quenched HRC in inches
Source: Erie Steel, Ltd.

Michael Mouilleseaux: Yeah. Essentially, the first three rows are for water quenching. And the bottom three are for oil quenching.

Doug Glenn: If you go over to the second major column called “Location in round,” what’s the size of the round we’re working on here?

Michael Mouilleseaux: It can vary. Go down to where it says, “Mild Oil Quench,” then left to “Surface,” then left then go to “2 inches.” Then, go straight down to the bottom, and that’s approximately J5. So, the “Distance from Quenched End — Sixteenths of an Inch” is Jominy position 5.

Michael Mouilleseaux: If you go to Jominy position 5 on the left-hand chart, you can see the hardness limits for that; the maximum is Rockwell C 41, and the minimum is Rockwell C 29. So, the chemistry can vary provided the hardenability at J5 is 29–41.

Doug Glenn: That’s the acceptable range?

Michael Mouilleseaux: That’s the acceptable range. That’s one way of looking at it. The chemistry would allow you to do that.

Now, go back to the chart on the right-hand side and to “Surface,” move down one row to “¾ radius from center,” and go left to two inches. Moving down from there you see that is Jominy position 8. So, the surface of a two-inch round is Jominy position 5, and the ¾ radius is Jominy position 8.

If you go to the hardness chart on the left-hand side, that says that if you had a two-inch round of 4320H, and it was oil quenched, and you check the hardness at ¾ radius, then the expectation is that it would be 23–34.

Now, go back to the same chart that we were just at, and go to the “Center” row of “Mild oil quench.” Continue left to two inches, and that’s J12. Go back to the left-hand chart, and J12 is 20–29 in the center of the part.

So, the surface of the part could be 41, ¾ radius, center of the part would be 34, and the center of the part would be 29.And that would all meet the criteria.

Doug Glenn: The maximum for J5 would be 41.But at J12 you could get a 20 in the middle.

Michael Mouilleseaux: Right. That is one way to look at this chart. But there is another way.

Notice that it says “rounds.”There are some nuances to having flats and rectangles because, if you think about it, for the cross-sectional area of a rectangle, the hardenability is going to be determined by the direction that it is thinnest, not by the direction that it is thickest.

Take a gear tooth, for example: in the chart that we just made up the gear teeth, the root of the gear was about a half inch, just slightly more; and if we go to this same chart, go to “Center” of “Mild oil quench,” and then go to a “0.5 inch,” and when you go straight down, that’s the J3.

Is a gear necessarily a round? Of course, the answer to that is no. So, in complex shapes you can use this data, but you have to interpolate it in order to understand it.

To some extent, the first time you run this, you’re going to say, “I have a gear, and the root is a half inch across. And I know that the J3 is 40. And I’ll run this part, and I’ll section it and I’ll measure it and it’s 40. And I’ll say that’s a good approximation of that.” And experientially, you build confidence in this, that is, it’s your operation, your quenching operation, and your components. It allows you to interpolate these, and they become extremely useful.

So, is it definitive? No. Is it useful? Yes.

Doug Glenn: It gives you a ballpark, right? I mean, it’s giving you something, maybe guardrails.

Michael Mouilleseaux: It gives you a ballpark; it gives you guardrails. And I can tell you that after having run gear product in the same equipment for ten years, I can say that it’s definitive. I can say that if I have this hardenability, and I get this hardenability number for this heat, and these gears are made from this heat of steel, and it has a J3 of 42. If I’m at 38, I know something is going on other than just hardenability. And, at that point, I would suspect my heat treat operation.

Doug Glenn: Yeah. I have one more question about this chart: On the bottom right part of the graph there are two plot lines on there. What do those represent? I was thinking one represented the water quench and the bottom one represents the oil quench.

Plot lines representing maximum hardenability and minimum hardenability
Source: Erie Steel, Ltd.

Michael Mouilleseaux: The top one represents the maximum hardenability. And the lower the lower one represents the minimum hardenability.

Doug Glenn: That’s your band. Okay. Those are basically your values over on the left-hand side then. Very good.

I don’t know about you, but I found that helpful. I really didn’t ever know how to read these tables. So, maybe someone else will find that useful. Thanks, Michael. I appreciate your expertise.

Michael Mouilleseaux: It’s been my pleasure.

About The Guest

Michael Mouilleseaux
General Manager at Erie Steel, Ltd.
Sourced from the author

Michael Mouilleseaux is general manager at Erie Steel LTD. Mike has been at Erie Steel in Toledo, OH, since 2006 with previous metallurgical experience at New Process Gear in Syracuse, NY, and as the Director of Technology in Marketing at FPM Heat Treating LLC in Elk Grove, IL. Having graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Metallurgical Engineering, Mike has proved his expertise in the field of heat treat, co-presenting at the 2019 Heat Treat show and currently serving on the Board of Trustees at the Metal Treating Institute.

Contact Mike at mmouilleseaux@erie.com.

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Heat Treat Radio #112: Lunch & Learn: How To Use a Hardenability Chart Read More »

heat treat radio

General Parts Cleaning (01:40)

Legislation (11:40)

Aqueous Based vs. Solvent Cleaners (25:07)

Waste in Cleaning (29:07)

The Cost Debate (33:07)

Cleaning and the Environment (39:03)

About The Guest

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Introduction (00:30)

What Is Ceramic Fiber? (04:58)

Why Fiber? (08:28)

Repairability (10:51)

Fiber Shrinkage (12:57)

Electric Element Modules (18:32)

Furnace Doors (23:52)

Ceramic Maintenance (27:07)

Concerns with Free Floating Fiber (30:20)

Induction at Chiz (35:20)

About The Guest

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Introduction (00:36)

FNC and Brake Rotors (02:30)

Success with FNC (05:36)

What Is FNC? (08:38)

Benefits of FNC (10:35)

Applications of FNC (14:51)

FNC at General Motors (19:52)

Starting Out with FNC (23:26)

Part Fixturing (25:23)

Early Players in FNC (26:49)

FNC and New Technologies (29:39)

Current State of Brake Rotor Industry (39:05)

Final Thoughts (42:18)

About The Guest

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1. Not Into Resolutions? Here Are Some Alternatives

2. Heat Treaters Changing Lives

3. We Don’t Stop Learning Just Because It’s a Holiday Break

4. Watch & Listen

5. Brain Fun To Launch the New Year

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Meet Dave Deiwert (01:10)

Indicators of Leaks (03:45)

Isolating the Source of the Leak (05:11)

Understanding Leak Detector Technology (07:14)

Understanding Helium (11:53)

Be Patient with Leak Detection! (13:14)

The Dead Stick Method (16:48)

Saving on Helium Gas (21:35)

About The Guest

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The IHEA Decarbonization Summit (01:03)

IHEA’s Qualifications (02:36)

Keynote Speakers (04:44)

Is Electrification the Only Answer? (07:25)

Who Should Attend the Summit? (09:21)

Closing Remarks (12:34)

About The Guest

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What Is CMMC? (03:34)

What Is DFARS? (08:45)

Levels of Assessment (10:59)

What’s Involved in Becoming NIST Compliant? (21:14)

How To Become CMMC Compliant? (23:46)

Cost of Certification (26:52)

What Can a Registered Practitioner Do for You? (29:02)

Cybersecurity Areas To Be Aware Of (31:48)

About The Guest

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Understanding a Hardenability Chart (01:59)

About The Guest

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