Voestalpine

Auto Partner Enters Agreement for New Nitriding Technology

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

An automotive partner based in the Czech Republic has entered an agreement with a nitriding company based in Montreal, Canada, for a new nitriding system to enhance the durability of stainless steel.

The high performance metals division of Voestalpine AG has entered an agreement with Nitrex Metal, a company that focuses on nitriding/nitrocarburizing technologies, to bring new innovations in stainless steel hardening technologies to the Czech Republic.

“The agreement builds on a strong partnership and confirms the market potential of hardening technologies for stainless steels,” said Marcin Stoklosa, special projects manager of Nitrex Metal.

“We are excited about bringing these innovative heat-treat processes to the Czech Republic market. . . . Nitrex’s proven technologies offer numerous benefits to our industrial customers looking to maximize the life span and quality of their engineered parts and components,” said Zbyněk Drda, Voestalpine Heat Treatment Manager.

Capable of treating 304, 316 and 412 grade stainless steels, the new system with integral process technologies Nitreg®-S and Nano-S™ optimizes the mechanical performance and economic return by making these steels extremely wear and corrosion resistant and capable of achieving a longer useful life. Post cleaning of treated parts and added production steps such as machining are eliminated.

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Special Steel Plant in Kapfenberg, Austria, to Boast Fully Automated Melting System

/ MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT, MANUFACTURING HEAT TREAT NEWS

 

Franz Rotter, head of the High Performance Metals Division

Since the official groundbreaking ceremony in April 2018, preparations for the construction of the world’s most advanced special steel plant in Kapfenberg, Austria, have been progressing rapidly. By awarding the contract for the electric arc furnace, the converter, and the secondary metallurgical systems—which represent the technological core of the plant—voestalpine has taken another important step in realizing the project.

The SMS group, based in Düsseldorf, Germany, will be responsible for the engineering, process technology, and start-up of the fully automated melting system, which will begin production in 2021.

“Awarding the contract for the supply of the main melting units, which represent around one-third of the total investment volume, lays the technological basis for the new special steel plant,” said Franz Rotter, member of the management board of voestalpine AG and head of the High Performance Metals Division. “The SMS group will contribute its comprehensive know-how to this project, both in the metallurgical systems and in the areas of digitalization and automation.”

In addition to the electric arc furnace, in which ultra-pure scrap and alloys are melted into liquid special steels at temperatures of up to 16232°F (9,000°C), the SMS group will also supply various after treatment systems that give the material its special properties. The units are operated with electricity from 100 percent renewable energy.”

The plant technology will set new standards worldwide in terms of digitalization. An ultra-modern sensor and electronic system enables the entire production process to be controlled from a central control station.

Special Steel Plant in Kapfenberg, Austria, to Boast Fully Automated Melting System Read More »

Construction Begins on World’s Most Advanced Special Steel Plant, Includes Heat Treat

/ ENERGY HEAT TREAT, FEATURED NEWS
Franz Rotter, member of the Management Board of voestalpine AG and head of the High Performance Metals Division

A recent groundbreaking ceremony in Kapfenberg, Austria, marked the inauguration of a new benchmark in plant design that will set international standards in digitization of production processes, including heat treatment, high-tech surface treatment, and additive manufacturing, for a global steelmaker.

The three-year construction phase for the new voestalpine special steel plant will, from 2021 onwards, will produce around 205,000 tons of special high-performance steels, especially for the international aviation and automotive industries as well as for the oil & gas sector.

The new high-tech special steel plant, once operative, is intended to replace the existing voestalpine Böhler Edelstahl GmbH & Co KG plant in Kapfenberg and designed to produce premium quality pre-materials for aircraft components, tools for the automotive industry, equipment for oil & gas extraction, and for the 3D printing of highly complex metal parts.

As part of the digitalized production process, around 8,000 process data will be recorded in parallel and implemented or evaluated on an ongoing basis.

“The high degree of digitalization at the new special steel plant is the prerequisite for being able to supply our customers with even higher material qualities, and, in doing so, to further extend our global market leadership in tool and special steels,” said Franz Rotter, member of the Management Board of voestalpine AG and head of the High Performance Metals Division. “The relevant development work and qualifying our employees in robotics, sensor technology, and data analysis takes place at our own digitalization competence center located directly on the site of the plant.”

Construction Begins on World’s Most Advanced Special Steel Plant, Includes Heat Treat Read More »

15 Quick Heat Treat News Items To Keep You Current

/ FEATURED NEWS, HEAT TREAT NEWS INDUSTRIES

 

 

 

15 Quick Heat Treat News Items To Keep You Current

The heat treat industry is one of people transitioning and companies executing business, achieving goals, and receiving acknowledgments. Heat Treat Today offers News Chatter, a feature highlighting representative moves, transactions, and kudos from around the industry.

Personnel and Company Changes and Moves

  • Roberto Pancaldi, current Tenova Metals chief operating officer, has become the new Tenova Metals CEO, directly reporting to Andrea Lovato, CEO of Tenova.

  • Roberto Pancaldi, Tenova Metals CO

    The Aluminum Federation, the trade body for the UK aluminum industry, has announced that appointment of a new chief executive. Mr. Tom Jones joins the organization from MMC Hardmetal UK, part of the Mitsubishi Materials group, where he was general manager. Tom has more than 35 years experience of working in manufacturing.

  • The Board of GKN Group plc has announced that Anne Stevens, currently Interim Chief Executive, has agreed to become the Group’s new Chief Executive with immediate effect. It was added that since her appointment, Stevens has taken leadership of an ongoing and wide-ranging internal review of all GKN’s businesses which has culminated in the development of a transformation plan to improve GKN’s performance.

    Solar Atmospheres of California's expansion includes installation of 4 new furnaces purchased from Solar Manufacturing, Inc

  • Solar Atmospheres of California (SCA) announce the completion of its most recent facility expansion. Project expansion began taking shape in July 2016 with groundbreaking for a new 25,000 sq. ft. building. In preparation for the added growth, SCA has procured an additional four vacuum furnaces from sister company Solar Manufacturing (SMI) based in Souderton, Pennsylvania.

    Equipment Transactions

  • a heat treatment line from SMS group

    German metal processor Ilsenburger Grobblech GmbH ordered a new heat treatment line from SMS group. The line, project name "Adjustage II", will be consist of a shot-blaster, two roller hearth furnaces, the MultiFlex-Quench®, a plate leveler, a cleaning and priming line, and a water treatment plant and be capable of processing more than 300,000 tons of heavy plate annually. Commissioning is scheduled to take place early in 2020.

  • Wisconsin Oven Corporation shipped two electrically heated standard horizontal quench systems to an aluminum manufacturer, each designed to heat 1,000 pounds of aluminum to a 950°F operating temperature with qualified operating temperature ranges of 775°F and 1,075°F.

  • Grieve recently supplied a 1000°F (538°C) top-loading oven that will be used for curing composite materials in large molds at a manufacturer’s facility. Workspace dimensions measure 168 inches wide x 48 inches deep x 48 inches high, and 120 kW are installed in lncoloy -sheathed tubular heating elements. A 12,500-CFM, 10-HP recirculating blower provides horizontal airflow.

    Baker Furnace
  • Graftech Advanced Graphite Materials in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, recently divested assets to refractory manufacturer Allied Mineral Products, Inc., located in Columbus, Ohio, and GTRefractory Solutions LLC in Wilmington, Delaware. Allied purchased the intellectual property rights to a collection of refractory cements and pastes, and GT Refractory Solutions acquired assets such as carbon and semi-graphite carbon brick, cement, pastes, porous carbons and graphite powders specialized for use in the steel, ferroalloy and iron industries.
  • Baker Furnace, Brea, Calif., the west coast division of the Thermal Product Solutions (TPS), moved to a new 40,000 sq-ft manufacturing space facility in 2017, which contributed to record shipments of custom and standard units in a variety of configurations. Among other projects, drop-bottom furnaces, crucible furnaces, car bottom furnaces, and batch ovens will be used for a variety of applications in the heat treating, foundry, composites, and automotive industries.

    HBD Industries acquires True Position Technologies LLC
  • HBD Industries announced the expansion of its Precision Components Platform through the acquisition of True Position Technologies LLC (“True Position”), based in Valencia, California. A leading provider of complex machined components for flight control applications, True Position specializes in manufacturing high specification components that require multiple machining, testing and finishing processes all within extremely tight tolerances.

Accreditations, Certifications, Patents, and More

  • Conrad Kacsik Instrument Systems, Inc., has been reaccredited for ISO-IEC 17025:2005 by A2LA, a continuous A2LA accreditation since 2000.
  • Heat treaters Metallurgical Processing Inc., based in New Britain, Connecticut, has been awarded a 24-month Nadcap accreditation after being audited to 10 checklists.

  • Bodycote HIP now counts nine Nadcap-accredited sites with the recent award to the Surahammar, Sweden, location.

    Advanced Heat Treat Corp., which has held Nadcap accreditation since 2013, has been awarded Nadcap Merit status for Heat Treating (Ion Nitriding) at the MidPort location in Waterloo, Iowa. This is the highest accreditation period that can be earned. "We are proud to achieve Merit status for the third time in a row and be granted a 24-month accreditation. We hope our customers take pride in the fact they send their parts to AHT," stated John Ludeman, Director of Metallurgy and Quality Excellence.

  • Bodycote, the world’s largest provider of heat treatment and specialist thermal processing services, announced that its Surahammar, Sweden, Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) location has earned its Nadcap accreditation. The Surahammar site has been producing Powdermet® Near Net Shape (NNS) and Selective Surface Net Shape (SSNS) components for many years, using its long experience of manufacturing complex, high integrity components from powder metal to serve markets such subsea, oil and gas, marine, nuclear, tool steel and automotive. Bodycote HIP now has nine Nadcap-accredited sites.

  • SAE International, Warrendale, Pa., announces that technical standard AMS2750 – Pyrometry, has received complete recognition by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration Center for Devices and Radiological Health, and it has been added to its list of recognized consensus standards database, List #47.

     

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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Heat Treatment Line Commissioned for Oil & Gas Industry Supplier

/ ENERGY HEAT TREAT, FEATURED NEWS

Austrian steel pipe producer voestalpine Tubulars GmbH & Co KG recently commissioned a new heat treatment line and a hot tube straightening machine to meet the growing demand from the oil and gas sectors for seamless tubes that can process steel grades with alloying contents of up to approximately 20 percent.

SMS group will supply the line, designed for seamless tubes with outside diameters between 60.3 and 273.0 millimeters and with a capacity of 25 tons per hour. The heat treatment line consists of a walking beam type austenitizing furnace, a quenching head, a cooling table for normalizing, a tempering furnace, also of walking beam design, a cooling bed, and two sawing stations for sample cutting. This equipment allows voestalpine Tubulars to perform various different heat treatments such as quenching, tempering, and normalizing in one single line.

The heat treatment line currently can handle tubes with wall thicknesses of up to 25 millimeters. The fully automatic line is designed to be expanded by an additional quenching unit at a later stage in order to process tubes with wall thicknesses greater than 30 millimeters.

 

 

 

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Voestalpine Invests Millions in Aerospace

/ AEROSPACE HEAT TREAT, AEROSPACE HEAT TREAT NEWS, ENERGY HEAT TREAT, FEATURED NEWS
Aerospace is a key strategic growth area for Voestalpine, and is therefore a high priority in the coming years. Over the medium term the company expects to increase Group revenue in this technologically challenging customer segment from its current level of EUR 300 million to around EUR 500 million. In the next two years Voestalpine will invest over EUR 40 million in a new high-tech, high-speed forging line at Group company Böhler Edelstahl GmbH & Co KG in Kapfenberg in order to literally give additional thrust to this growth. The state-of-the-art facility is scheduled to go into operation as early as in 2018, and will primarily be used to manufacture forgings as pre-materials for extremely high load-bearing aircraft components, such as engine parts, or as workpieces for sophisticated products used in the oil & gas industry.

Over the next one and a half decades global demand for almost 40,000 new aircraft is forecast. The major investment in a new, state-of-the-art forging line demonstrates that Voestalpine is again staying abreast of the dynamic developments in the aerospace sector.

The aerospace industry is one of the key drivers of our international growth strategy in the future market of mobility. All most important aircraft manufacturers already rely on technologies and products from Voestalpine. By intensifying our innovation and investment activities we aim to further expand our position as a leading provider also in this sophisticated customer segment-

Wolfgang Eder, Chairman of the Management Board of voestalpine AG Wolfgang Eder, Chairman of the Management Board of Voestalpine AG

Fully automated facility sets new standards

The Special Steel Division of the Voestalpine Group is one of the leading global suppliers of high-performance materials and special forgings for the aerospace industry. Its highly stress-resistant products include structural parts, engine components and mounts, landing gear parts, and door segments that are used in the aircraft programs of manufacturers including Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, and Embraer.

The new high-tech forging line will not only play a key role in increasing volumes in the aerospace business segment, but it will also set new standards in product quality, process automation, and digitalization. As a result, this investment significantly strengthens the technological leadership enjoyed by our Styrian production companies. Investment in a new special steel plant is also in planning as a means of opening up new dimensions in materials production. This is in addition to, and independent of, the current project. A final decision on the location of the special steel plant is expected for the second half of 2017.

Franz Rotter, Member of the Management Board of voestalpine AG and Head of the Special Steel Division Franz Rotter, Member of the Management Board of Voestalpine AG and Head of the Special Steel Division

Moreover, the new facility will produce forged components for oil and gas exploration which are required to withstand extreme conditions both on land and at sea. The high-tech forging line will process the material with a pressing force of 4,400 tonnes and a speed of up to 120 strokes per minute, or 2 strokes per second.

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