StrikoWestofen

A Baker’s Dozen Quick Heat Treat News Items to Keep You Current

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT NEWS INDUSTRIES

A Baker’s Dozen Quick Heat Treat News Items to Keep You Current

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

Personnel and Company Chatter

  • Ashleigh Walters, president of Onex, Inc., recently participated in Penn State’s 2018 Fall Engineering Speaker Series, addressing how leadership can create impact through focusing on teamwork, creativity, improved processes, and mission.
  • Wallwork Heat Treatment’s Richard Burslem recently received the Meritorious Service to Heat Treatment Industry Award at the annual Surface Engineering and Heat Treatments Awards, presented on October 12th at the Radisson Blu in Manchester by Alan Hick, the secretary of the Contract Heat Treatment Association (CHTA).
  • A high tech provider of vacuum solutions for multiple markets recently opened a new 27,000-sq ft building in Nashua, New Hampshire, to house the company’s North American headquarters for administration, sales, product management, marketing and customer care. Pfeiffer Vacuum will convert the former 24,000 square foot administration building into a Service Center of Excellence, bringing together under one roof all service activities for the major part of the Pfeiffer Vacuum product portfolio.
  • A mobile heating station where ceramic components can be heated uniformly to 400ºC has been introduced by StrikoWestofen, allowing the components of dosing furnaces to be heated up on site.
  • StandardAero recently extended its long-running relationship with leading aviation services provider Dumont Group, LLC, through a follow-on contract for Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) JT15D-5R engine overhauls.
  • Novelis Inc. recently made several newsworthy announcements: 1) The company announced that it expects its new $300 million automotive aluminum sheet manufacturing plant in Guthrie, Kentucky, to be in production in mid-2020 where it will operate heat treatment and pre-treatment lines that prepare aluminum for use in vehicle parts. 2) Novelis has agreed to partner with Impression Technologies to explore innovative ways to increase the broader adoption of aluminum through the hot stamping process. Impression Technologies has the exclusive rights to Hot Form Quench (HFQ®), a unique technology used to design and manufacture components using ultra high-strength aluminum for the high volume automotive and transport markets. 3) Finally, the company unveiled plans to establish a global network of Customer Solution Centers (CSCs) to accelerate collaborative innovation between Novelis and automakers for the next generation of vehicle design.

Equipment Chatter

  • Ipsen USA recently posted a record month of sales with orders for nine TITAN® vacuum furnaces to be shipped for use in a variety of applications for companies in aerospace, automotive and commercial heat-treating industries. In addition,  Ipsen also sold seven custom units, including MetalMaster®, TurboTreater® and vacuum aluminum brazing furnaces.
  • A Hot Isostatic Press from Quintus Technologies has been purchased by Paulo to be installed in the Cleveland Division’s recent expansion and primarily support densification and heat treatment of investment castings and additively manufactured parts.
  • GE Additive and GE Aviation recently announced that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given ‘change in design’ approval to replace a conventionally manufactured power door opening system (PDOS) bracket, used on GE Aviation’s GEnx-2B commercial airline engines that power the Boeing 747-8, with an additively manufactured bracket.
  • An order for a complete walking hearth furnace plant has been received by ANDRITZ Group from Deutsche Edelstahlwerke Specialty Steel GmbH & Co. KG, Germany, for its facility in Witten, Germany. Production is scheduled to start in the second quarter of 2020.

  • The expansion agreement for an existing bell annealer facility is expected to begin production next month. Guang Xi Zheng Run New Material Technology Co., Ltd. placed an order with EBNER® for the expansion this summer. The agreement includes three HICON® workbases employing 100 % argon as a process atmosphere, two heating bells, and one cooling bell.

Kudos Chatter

  • Solar Atmospheres – Greenville, SC, announces that it has been awarded Nadcap 18-month Merit status for Heat Treating, Brazing and Carburizing. We are extremely pleased PRI has recognized our corporate commitment to quality. Achieving 18-month merit has been a goal set by Solar’s employees since opening its doors in 2015. The adherence to strict specification requirements, flawless process execution, and a daily commitment to quality processing is evident among all employees of Solar Atmospheres. The Solar Atmospheres Greenville facility has held Nadcap accreditation since 2015.
  • Meron Medical, LLC, announces the successful transition to ISO 13485:2016. Safety and quality are non-negotiables in the medical devices industry. Regulatory requirements are increasingly stringent throughout every step of a product’s life cycle, including service and delivery. With greater attention on the organization’s ability to meet applicable customer and regulatory requirements, ISO 13485:2016 focuses on the entire supply chain of the medical device industry, with added emphasis on risk management.

 

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

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Product Carriers at the “Heart of Any Heat Treatment Process”

/ AUTOMOTIVE HEAT TREAT, AUTOMOTIVE HEAT TREAT NEWS, FEATURED NEWS

Innovative product carrier concepts can save light metal foundries millions by massively reducing alignment work and energy costs while increasing throughput and process reliability.

Furnace builders often see product carriers as a necessary evil which is why the savings that can be achieved by using optimized carrier concepts are often underestimated. In contrast, StrikoWestofen, located in Gummersbach, Germany, pursues a holistic, process-oriented heat treatment approach in which the interplay of furnace system, quenching unit, and product carrier is fine-tuned.

Rudi Reidel, General Manager, StrikoWestofen

Heat treatment is a complex multi-layered process in the manufacture of light metal castings and forgings. Its importance has increased in the past few years, particularly in the automotive industry. Today, heat treatment is applied not only to heavily stressed components such as engine parts or wheel rims, but also to safety-critical structural components found in body and chassis. Heat treatment aims to optimize material properties such as ductility, hardness, and tensile strength, as well as eliminating residual stresses. The process is carried out in three stages: solution annealing, quenching, and aging. Throughout all three stages, the treated parts are mounted on product carriers.

Product carriers are considered to be the starting point for the development of a heat treatment system at StrikoWestofen. Looking at the system holistically, they are at the very heart of any heat treatment process. “[O]ur team has completely redesigned the product carrier, built countless prototypes and carried out a large number of tests. The outcome is very promising,” said Rudi Riedel, manager of StrikoWestofen. The resulting modern product carriers are designed to realize considerable savings compared to conventional models. These savings result from reduced alignment work, increased throughput, improved process reliability and a remarkably low energy consumption.

StrikoWestofen (Gummersbach) was able to reduce the weight of product carrier mountings from 4 kg to ca. 2.5 kg.

Reduced alignment work

Heat treatment releases residual stresses which often lead to distortion of components. In order to match the tolerances specified by the end customer, any distortions must be reduced through manual or mechanical alignment work. The cost arising from this alignment work can be considerable, but it can be reduced by using optimized product carriers. The special design of the frame mountings ensures an even transfer of the heat to the component and its uniform cooling using water, air, or a mixture of air and water. Simulation, meticulous measuring, and sophisticated heat treatment tests help to ensure consistent quality and precise design of the product carriers.

Repeatable processes and increased plant capacity 

Packing density and therefore throughput of the heat treatment system can be increased through fewer profiles and fixtures, which are also tailored to the component they are supporting. Modern additive manufacturing processes and precision measuring of each individual product carrier prior to delivery guarantee repeatability and stability of the heat treatment process. Instead of heavy frame profiles, StrikoWestofen relies on weight-reduced frames for its product carriers. This means less mass overall needs to be heated up and cooled down again, thus saving energy as well as dramatically reducing solution annealing and quenching times. Finally, the carriers are made from stainless steel instead of normal steel, preventing corrosion and surface rust and thereby increasing durability.

“Product carriers are an often underestimated but essential component of the heat treatment process. Innovative developments in this field make an important contribution to the reduction of the costs per casting and help our customers to maintain their competitive advantage in dynamic global markets,” noted Reidel.

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StrikoWestofen Opens Heat-Treatment Business Unit

/ FEATURED NEWS, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT NEWS

As of immediately, StrikoWestofen covers another step in the production chain of the light metal casting industry. From now on, heat treatment units for cast aluminium parts are another core competence of StrikoWestofen.

This is made possible by the recent takeover of the employees of BPR-Engineering GmbH from Rheda-Wiedenbrück. The 20 years of expertise of Frank Herkenräder, the founder of the company, and his team form the basis of the new StrikoWestofen business unit Heat Treatment.

The goal of this extension of our product portfolio is to meet the customers’ needs even better. The new Heat Treatment business unit pursues a holistic approach: heat treatment furnaces, quenching units and product carriers are not seen as individual components of a system but as part of a whole. This allows enormous cost savings due to the better coordination of processes, in some cases bringing distorsions down to 0% and reducing energy consumption by up to 30%.

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