It’s hard to believe that Braddock Metallurgical started with one salt pot furnace. But that’s how it began, when William Braddock Sr. heat treated tooling for local machine shops.

That was over 60 years ago. Today, of course, Braddock Metallurgical runs eight production facilities in Florida (four), Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey and Puerto Rico. With close to 100 employees, Braddock Metallurgical provides services including vacuum and atmosphere heat treatment, carburizing, carbonitriding, brazing, nitriding, hydrogen processing, induction heat treating, flame hardening, stress relieving and normalizing. The Daytona Beach, Fla.-based company serves the aerospace, defense, automotive, medical, firearm, gas turbine, and oil and gas industries.

With so many services offered, it’s easy to look past those that are specific and unique to Braddock Metallurgical. These include: ferritic nitrocarburizing (FNC) with post-oxidation; low-temperature nitriding of stainless steels; magnetic particle inspection, which is capable of detecting surface and slightly subsurface discontinuities in ferromagnetic materials; and fluorescent penetrant inspection, which is used to determine surface defects that could compromise the integrity or quality of a part.

Braddock Metallurgical can also braze honeycomb joints with high intensity and strength on simple and complex shapes with little distortion. The company uses the latest cleaning processes, brazing filler metals, binders, and atmospheres to produce the highest quality braze joints achievable.

The longtime MTI member has an impressive array of state-of-the art equipment throughout its facilities. Braddock Metallurgical boasts integral-quench furnace lines, vacuum tempering furnaces, high-pressure gas-quenching vacuum furnaces, a rotary-retort continuous furnace line, car-bottom furnaces, box tempering furnaces and pit temper furnaces. The company also has a wide range of various hardness testing and lab equipment.

In addition to its sheer size, what separates Braddock Metallurgical from the competition is its continual commitment to upgrading technology and support systems. The company’s instrumentation, laboratory equipment and computer systems allows it to stay on the cutting edge of technological advancements. Use of these tools improves efficiency and provides more repeatable processes, which leads directly to consistent levels of quality and service.    

Along those lines, four of Braddock Metallurgical’s eight heat-treat plants are Nadcap certified; all eight are AS9100 Rev. C certified.

As a sign that the company is continually evolving, Braddock Metallurgical made several significant investments in the past year alone. It opened its Charlotte, N.C., facility in 2015 and also purchased three new nitriding furnaces. The company also added automated straightening equipment and laboratory equipment at multiple locations.

And Braddock Metallurgical is always looking toward the future. The third-generation, family-owned business will continue to explore expansion into new areas as dictated by the market. The company will also upgrade equipment and expand existing sites if needed to maintain its high quality and service standards.

Visit www.braddockmt.com for more information on Braddock Metallurgical.