What Will Heat Treating in the Mid-21st Century Look Like?

February 13, 2025 / Manufacturing Heat Treat Technical Content, OP-ED, TECHNOLOGY

The Heat Treat Doctor® has returned to offer sage advice to Heat Treat Today readers and to answer your questions about heat treating, brazing, sintering, and other types of thermal treatments as well as questions on metallurgy, equipment, and process-related issues.

This informative piece was first released in Heat Treat Today’s January 2025 Technologies to Watch print edition.

As a very young engineer, I vividly recall our company president had a statue of a three-headed elephant in his office. One head faced forward, one faced slightly to the right, one faced slightly to the left. The moral: looking backwards is not the path forward! Let’s learn more about what the heat treatment industry will look like by the middle of this century.

The Market

A number of market studies and economic forecast models suggest that the global heat treatment market will grow to between 130–150 billion U.S. dollars by no later than 2030 and to around 200–220 billion U.S. dollars by 2040, barring another significant or sustained global economic event. These forecasts assume several minor downturns in the economy of various countries and in manufacturing segments due to economic and geopolitical factors in the coming decades.

Heat Treatment Market Shift

The most significant and fundamental shift that is and will continue is in the makeup of the heat treatment equipment segment of the North American market. What began in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a transition from older, long-established practices and processes to equipment capable of meeting the rapidly evolving demands of technological innovation will continue. Standardization (for cost containment), changes in manufacturing methods and methodologies, and environmental considerations are also fueling this change.

A demand for higher performance products, end-of-life expectations (in some but not all products), an emphasis on systems with single-piece flow or small batch productivity are just a few examples of this change. Other factors such as equipment obsolescence, the need for even higher manufacturing efficiencies, long term operator health and safety concerns, predictive (as opposed to preventative) maintenance, and adaptation to both the speed at which the manufacturing landscape is changing and the type of flexible equipment/processes reinforce these conclusions.

From an equipment standpoint, vacuum furnaces and applied energy systems are and will continue to experience rapid growth at the expense of more traditional atmosphere furnaces. Safety, open flames and emissions of any kind (NO_x, CO₂, particulates) are driving this change. As such, the dramatic reduction and control of greenhouse gases and the cooling of our planet by the mid-century will be metamorphic. This trend is not only expected to continue but to accelerate (Figures 1–2).

Figure 1. North American Industry by Equipment Segment, 2012–2018 (see Herring, *Atmosphere Heat Treatment, Vol. 1*, 2014)

For example, the driving force behind the development, use and integration of vacuum technology into manufacturing is not only due to the fact that it is lean, green, and agile, but also that vacuum technology best addresses the identified needs of the heat treatment industry, namely:

Energy efficient equipment
Processing with minimal part distortion
Optimization of heat treatment processes (especially diffusion-related processes)
Environmentally friendly by-products and emissions
Adaptability/flexibility for new and advanced materials
Process controls incorporating intelligent sensors
Designs based on heat treat modeling and simulation
Equipment/process integration into manufacturing

Change — Its Pace and Form

A paradigm shift in the workforce has occurred, transitioning to a vastly more mobile and younger group of individuals relying on the growing role of automation and communication in manufacturing. This shift is principally responsible for accelerating the pace of change in the heat treatment industry, from what has traditionally been a slow moving and slow-to-adapt industry, to one capable of meeting the need for rapid deployment of new products and one that keeps pace with technological innovations.

Moving forward, equipment manufacturers and suppliers to the industry will continue to look at product standardization to maximize profitability, thus driving the industry to “cookie cutter” solutions or, in a diametrically opposite philosophy, looking to provide highly customized solutions, often with risk factors incorporated into the pricing as specialized solutions with high profit margins to application-specific needs.

Figure 2. North American Industry by Equipment Segment, 2024–2035 (see Herring, *Atmosphere Heat Treatment, Vol. 1*, 2014)

Technology/Innovation Drivers and Industry Trends

Heat treatment will always be a core manufacturing competency, and as such, decisions will continue to be made to either heat treat in-house or outsource to commercial heat treatment shops. It is significant that the percentage of manufacturers with in-house heat treat departments (80–85%) to commercial (10–15%) heat treat shops hasn’t really changed in the last six decades! The consolidation of companies is a trend that is expected to continue.

What is more prevalent today than ever is the tremendous pressure being exerted on manufacturing from senior management to increase product velocity and lower unit cost. While recalls seem to be a way of life these days, product liability and consume demands for product performance are forcing change, even in the most extreme applications.

As a result, the most identifiable trends in today’s North American heat treatment industry are:

Growing the manufacturing portion (percentage) of GDP through mobility and adaptability, coupled with more sophisticated and higher paying jobs
Lowering product unit cost through technology adaptation
Obsoleting older equipment and technologies and replacing them with innovative new and/or high productivity heat treatment systems. Examples include:
- New materials development allowing for different processing methods and/or lower temperature heat treatments while maintaining environmentally friendly equipment and processes
- Transition of carburizing/ carbonitriding from atmosphere to low pressure vacuum processes with either oil or high-pressure gas quenching, or both
- Use of single-piece heating and quenching of parts and/or small (versus large) batch processing to improve product velocity
- Changes in product materials and/or designs to allow more low temperature atmosphere treatments (e.g., nitriding, nitrocarburizing)
Use of advanced quenching techniques and quenching technologies to better manage distortion
Implementing artificial intelligence-based modeling and simulation software capable of equipment control and process optimization
Implementing the next generation of intelligent sensors, real-time data collection methods and analytics (including cloud-based computing)
Changing the focus of companies from “generalization” toward “specialization” with respect to products, services, processes (proprietary or unique) and new or innovative technologies to capture greater market share or present opportunities to generate higher profit margins
Accelerating the implementation of lean manufacturing strategies and applying these strategies to heat treatment:
- Eliminate high labor costs (via automation and controls), simplify operations (i.e., reduce the number of manufacturing steps), and adopt “build to order” strategies.
- Conservation of energy, on-demand part production, shortening of process cycles, and the move toward smaller lot sizes is the order of the day.
Continuing the transition from heat treatment departments to integrated manufacturing cells

In Summary

It is, and will be for decades to come, a truly magical time in the heat treatment industry. The slow-moving, plodding, three-headed elephant has been replaced by a lean and agile animal — technology. This will not only ensure a greener workplace but an environment of innovation for future generations. And as I am fond of saying about the future, there’s “magic in the aire!”

References

ASM International, Vision 2020. 1999.

Herring, Daniel H. “Esoteric Heat Treatment Industry Critique: 2019 and Beyond.” Industrial Heating, January 2019.

Herring, Daniel H. Atmosphere Heat Treatment, Volume 1. BNP Media, 2014.

Wolowiec-Koreka, Emilia. Carburising and Nitriding of Iron Alloys. Springer, 2024.

About the Author

Dan Herring
“The Heat Treat Doctor”
The HERRING GROUP, Inc.

Dan Herring has been in the industry for over 50 years and has gained vast experience in fields that include materials science, engineering, metallurgy, new product research, and many other areas. He is the author of six books and over 700 technical articles.

For more information: Contact Dan at dherring@heat-treat-doctor.com.

For more information about Dan’s books: see his page at the Heat Treat Store.

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Flipping Through Heat Treat Today’s Technical Files

March 3, 2022 / FEATURED NEWS, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT

We’re flipping through Heat Treat Today’s technical articles today to highlight four processes: annealing, brazing, carburizing, and forging. Read our top picks of technical articles from these categories like a case study on parts failure (annealing solution) and a new competitor to tried-and-true brazing.

ANNEALING: Part Failure Investigation & Resolution — a Case Study

When an automotive manufacturing began loosing time, money, and the steel itself due to frequent cracking, a third party stepped in to solve the part failure.

[blockquote author=”” style=”1″]In this case, the life cycle of these parts began in a steel mill, where coils of AISI 1045 carbon steel were produced. The parts were then annealed in preparation for fine blanking at our customer’s facility. Then, the parts would be through hardened and sent to the automotive manufacturer.[/blockquote]

BRAZING: The “Next Leap”: Diffusion Bonding for Critical Component Manufacturing

Electric vehicle production, semiconductor development, and a whole wealth of novel products are pushing at the fringes. Does this demand change to tried-and-true heat treat applications? You tell us!

[blockquote author=”” style=”1″]The most sophisticated global companies in electronic instrumentation and semiconductors view diffusion bonding as the wave of the future. The functional-value that 21st-century diffusion bonding technology now offers is a unique-and-beneficial solution in a class by itself; designers came to this realization after being confronted with component performance issues that could not be resolved by traditional brazing. Materials currently under consideration include pure aluminum, aluminum alloys, stainless steels, and nickel-based alloys as well as any other material, such as coated substrates for power electronics or glass and special material combinations (dissimilar joints).[/blockquote]

CARBURIZING: Elevate Your Knowledge: 5 Need-to-Know Case Hardening Processes

This technical article can be found under “Carburizing” in the navigation bar, but as the name implies, you’ll be diving into five essential case-hardening processes. BONUS! this one includes an excellent table to break down the differences.

[blockquote author=”” style=”1″]Case hardening processes are some of the most common heat treatments performed, but each process has its own unique needs. The table below [in the article] provides a summary of the considerations that need to be made when selecting the optimum process. This list is by no means exhaustive; it is encouraged to work with a furnace manufacturer familiar with each process to help select the correct process and equipment needed.[/blockquote]

FORGING: Forging, Quenching, and Integrated Heat Treat: DFIQ Final Report

Here’s a brain spinner: Direct from Forge Intensive Quenching. If you just asked “What?” Best read the full report (or at least the abstract) that tests this novel method — a method that could eliminate normalizing, quenching, and tempering.

[blockquote author=”” style=”1″]Data obtained on the mechanical properties of DFIQ forgings were compared to that of forgings after applying a conventional post-forging heat-treating process. Values of heat transfer coefficients in the DFIQ tank were determined experimentally using a special probe. This data was needed for calculating an optimal dwell time when quenching forgings in the DFIQ tank. It was shown that the application of the DFIQ process allows elimination of. . .[/blockquote]