MTI member profiles

MTI Member Profile: Bennett Heat Treating & Brazing Co., Inc.

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A blacksmith sweating over an open flame is not the image most heat treaters immediately identify with in 2024. In the present, heat treating tends to look more like a trained metallurgist supervising a complex brazing operation. Yet we should not throw out the blacksmith and his hammer, even though bridging the gap between past and present is a tough job. Bennett Heat Treating & Brazing Co., Inc. is known for doing just that.

This New Jersey heat treater was originally founded by Wilbur Bennett (a one-armed blacksmith turned heat treater) and was purchased by Anthony Quaglia in 1954. They make it their job to bridge the knowledge gap between the experienced and the novice heat treaters within their own team. After the sudden death of David Quaglia in 2017, John Quaglia leveraged his father’s foundational expertise to build a highly skilled team of seasoned veterans and emerging talent, which will one day include his children Anthony and Abby Quaglia. Today, Bennett Heat Treating has over 100 years of knowledge and over three generations of expertise to draw from in order to create an innovative future.

The original Bennett Heat Treating inspection department circa 1950s (Source: Bennett Heat Treating & Brazing Co., Inc.)

Technology and equipment are the keys to an innovative future, but new technology would be useless without inherited expertise. Bennett has been able to combine their modern equipment with veteran experience to create heat treating processes that are reliable. For example, their neutral salt bath with marquenching enables clients to control dimensions of parts with tight tolerances at high hardness requirements. The marquenching process is so repeatable that a few clients intentionally machine their intricate helical gears out of tolerance because they are sure Bennett’s process will return the parts to tolerance.

A solid team of knowledgeable experts who will bridge the heat treat industry’s generational gap also seamlessly meets the needs of clients. For Bennett’s major private, aerospace prime, and U.S. military clients, the metallurgical consultant team within Bennett bases its success on carefully listening to clients, identifying major lessons learned in the past, and collaborating with clients to methodize production processes that avoid past mistakes.

John Quaglia with wife Kerri and children Abby and Anthony at Bennett’s 100th year celebration (Source: Bennett Heat Treating & Brazing Co., Inc.)

John Quaglia recalls an example of how his team leads with expertise to collaborate with clients: a curved, thin part requiring nitriding on one area and optional nitriding all over it. After years of nitriding these parts, the team noted that when both sides of the part were nitrided, the edges chipped and the part would bow. Collaborating with the client, Bennett confirmed that only one side of the part needed to be nitrided. The team then developed tooling that was able to mask the part while maintaining the part’s dimensions.

In the future, Bennett Heat Treating & Brazing Co. intends to focus on gaining new equipment and building a cohesive team of employees to continue the high level of precision and quality work. No doubt, they will continue to seek to bridge the gap between seasoned heat treaters and new members on the scene through close communication — both amongst themselves and with clients. While the team will not be found in a blacksmith’s forge of the past, they will be collaborating with veteran experts and learning to apply that wisdom to meet the needs of present and future clients.

For more information:

Bennett Heat Treating & Brazing Co., Inc.

690 Ferry Street
Newark, NJ 07105

johnquaglia@bennettheat.com
www.bennettheat.com

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MTI Member Profile: Thermal-Vac Technology

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In brazing, a filler metal is used to create a strong bond between parts. In business, what holds companies together is the shared vision of its people. That is the philosophy of the team at Thermal-Vac Technology, southern California’s premier brazing facility, where an experienced crew shares a passion for solving complex puzzles and delivering quality outcomes.

As a supplier to major aerospace programs, Thermal-Vac is united with its customers in its uncompromising approach to quality control. One of the company’s taglines summarizes its mindset: “We build good parts here; at a profit if we can, a loss if we must, but always good parts.” The company has invested in cutting-edge digital systems that provide continual insight into its brazing processes. Monitoring equipment, including digital readouts from load thermocouples inside the furnaces, gathers real-time data from part surfaces. These tools allow operators unprecedented control throughout the braze cycle and the opportunity to review in detail every step of the process to identify opportunities for improvement.

Quality control is critical for the commercial heat treater.

Incorporating digital technologies into brazing has pushed Thermal-Vac to innovate in exciting ways. Brazing is a well-defined technique, with roots going back to ancient Egypt. But today’s manufacturing requirements push the boundaries of materials science. Exotic materials, elaborate component shapes, and new end-use applications all present opportunities for innovation. Thermal-Vac’s clients have come to rely on the company to find answers to their brazing challenges. To be ready to tackle whatever its clients need, the company has assembled a large, in-house engineering team. Thermal- Vac’s engineers draw upon their specialization in the brazing field to find creative solutions in close collaboration with their customers. Some of their routine achievements include implementing a new alloy, improving component design, or creating specialized tools to achieve the customer’s planned outcome.

The proof is in the product. Thermal-Vac’s quality control standard helped it to be selected to work on NASA’s SLS-Orion project, a space exploration vehicle that will eventually send astronauts to the moon and beyond. Thermal-Vac partnered with L3Harris/Aerojet Rocketdyne in the production of rocket motors by nickel plating 10-ft long tubes that needed to be precisely plated with an even, 0.0001 inch thickness. They also hand-assembled the rocket motors’ heat shields.

The company is proud to have received the 2023 MTI Commercial Heat Treater of the Year award, which it sees as a validation of its approach to constant improvement.

Vacuum furnace at Thermal-Vac Technology

Quality and innovation are not the entire Thermal-Vac story. CEO Heather Falcone sees the strength of the company arising from the way her 45-person team was assembled: by bringing people from all walks of life together to forge a special environment of trust and collaboration. Along with her three brothers — COO Shannon Driscol, Special Projects Expert Shane Driscol, and Sean Driscol, now president of the company’s sibling start-up company, Thermal-Vac Arizona — Heather has led the company’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and fair chance hiring practices. Heather and her brothers strive to create a workplace where everyone is valued and treated well. To do this, the company introduced well-received cultural initiatives such as a four-day work week, giving out over 20% of net profit in bonuses as featured in the Wall Street Journal, and awarded over $30,000 in charitable donations and scholarships in 2023 alone.

In recent years, Thermal-Vac Technology has been busy consolidating its operations at its Orange location. The company is pursuing numerous initiatives as it prepares for the future. Special focus will be given to streamlining operations and finding new ways to leverage technology so the company can remain agile and responsive. The company is also looking forward to continuing to foster a spirit of community in the North American heat treating industry.

For more information:

Thermal-Vac Technology

1221 W. Struck Ave.
Orange, CA 92867

sales@thermalvac.com
thermalvac.com

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MTI Member Profile: Newton Heat Treating Co., Inc.

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Newton Heat Treating might be located in California, but their impact is out of this world — literally. Serving a niche section of the aerospace industry since 1968, Newton Heat Treating is a company with 52 dedicated employees, working to complete highly specialized processes while retaining a merit-level of service and quality, empowering them to heat treat parts for outer space.

These highly specialized processes include cold stabilization, thermal cycling, stress relief, and the straightening of aluminum alloys. Also known as uphill quenching, cold stabilization is a cyclic thermal shock process which is used to reduce the detrimental effects of residual stresses on aluminum alloys. The use of custom fixtures and high-velocity steam instead of boiling water is what sets this process apart and makes it more efficient and cost effective. Newton is the only heat treater to perform this process, and because of that, they are working with a prime aerospace company to write an industry-standard specification for cold stabilization; this information will be available to the aerospace industry in 2024.

Furnaces such as these process client products efficiently and ensure on-time delivery. (Source: Newton Heat Treating Co., Inc.)

The primary equipment used in their processes includes the automated drop-bottom furnaces and quench
line. These furnaces process the bulk of clients’ products and have great efficiency. Though the company might not have the largest furnaces (working zones are 14’ x 5’ x 5.5’), they are nimble and will heat treat customer-supplied parts that other heat treaters do not want to touch — plus, they do it quicker than other, larger companies.

But they won’t just do jobs quicker, they will do them with five-star quality service. Newton is ITAR registered, as well as AS9100 and Nadcap certified with merit status since 2020. To ensure this standard of excellence, the last step in any process is a trip to the Final Inspection Department. There, dedicated employees inspect parts for hardness, conductivity, and cleanliness to verify the conformance of the heat treated material. This ensures success for the company’s partners: their clients.

As the last step before packing and shipping, dedicated employees in the Final Inspection Department examine parts for hardness, conductivity, and cleanliness to verify the conformance of the heat treated material. (Source: Newton Heat Treating Co., Inc.)

Their clients need this star level of quality since the atmosphere where many parts are headed is quite unforgiving: outer space, to be exact. The most interesting parts the company has treated are now orbiting in space and roaming on Mars. Parts on Voyager, an interstellar probe which is now beyond our solar system, underwent Newton’s cold stabilization process. Their thermal cycling process — a delicate process that can take up to 48 hours depending on the ramp rate, target temperatures, and number of cycles — is used on parts on Mars Rovers. With high stakes like these, keeping quality at the forefront is Newton’s goal and will continue to be into the future.

In the coming 5–10 years, the company will take small steps to become more energy efficient, environmentally friendly, and cybersecure, which will give them a giant leap into the future. Plans include replacing old equipment with new, investing more in information technology infrastructure to minimize cybersecurity issues and better protect their clients, and continuing to provide their clients with high-quality service that one might call “stellar.”

For more information:

Newton Heat Treating Co., Inc.

19235 E. Walnut Dr.
City of Industry, California 91748
United States

jrico@newtonheattreating.com
newtonheattreating.com

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