General Motors Co. plans to invest $918 million in four U.S. manufacturing sites, including $854 million to prepare these facilities to produce the company’s sixth-generation Small Block V-8 engine and an additional $64 million in Rochester, N.Y., and Defiance, Ohio, for castings and components to support EV production. These investments will enable the company to strengthen its full-size truck and SUV business and continue to support the company’s growing EV product portfolio. These investments bolster GM’s U.S. manufacturing operations and highlights the company’s commitment to continue providing customers a strong portfolio of ICE vehicles well into the future while continuing to accelerate its transformation to an all-electric future.

SECO/VACUUM received an order from an electric-vehicle (EV) manufacturer for a two-chamber vacuum furnace that will be used in the company’s R&D lab to low-pressure carburize (LPC) and oil quench prototype gears. The CaseMaster Evolution (CMe) has a working hot zone of 16 x 16 x 24 inches (400 x 400 x 600 mm) and a load capacity of 440 pounds (200 kg). It has a separate heating chamber, where product is heated and carburized, and a quenching chamber, where the load is immersed in an oil bath for rapid quenching. Both chambers are isolated with a vacuum door.

Desktop Metal received a $9 million order from a German automaker for binder-jet additive-manufacturing systems used for the mass production of powertrain components. This is the second order from the same automaker in less than 12 months, bringing the total amount of production AM systems ordered to $16.9 million to support digitally casted powertrain components for a popular car line.

SECO/WARWICK is scheduled to deliver two controlled-atmosphere brazing (CAB) lines and one universal chamber furnace for aluminum brazing to a manufacturer of diesel engine components. The CAB lines will enable the company to win more contracts for brazing large battery coolers. One of the systems will incorporate a furnace equipped with a 90.5-inch-wide (2,300-mm-wide) conveyor belt for large-dimension battery coolers. It is the widest CAB line sold to date by SECO/WARWICK in China. The CAB lines consist of a radiation preheating chamber, radiation brazing furnace, cooling chamber with an air jacket, final cooling chamber and control system. The universal chamber furnace provides brazing for low-scale production. This type of furnace is designed to braze a variety of heat exchangers in horizontal or vertical positions.

SECO/WARWICK will supply a continuous controlled-atmosphere brazing (CAB) line to an automotive manufacturer’s facility in Slovakia. The CAB line, designed for aluminum brazing, will be used for the mass production of various heat exchangers. It will provide reliability and energy savings while meeting environmental requirements. The furnace will be delivered with a gas heating system, but the design is flexible and can be adapted to fully electric heating. The fully automated solution will allow the manufacturer to increase its overall production and meet the challenges associated with the brazing process.

SECO/WARWICK received an order from an international company in the automotive industry for an EV/CAB (electric vehicle/controlled-atmosphere brazing) line. The system, which is designed to braze car battery coolers for the EV industry, will be installed at a newly established factory in Mexico. The EV/CAB line includes a brazing furnace, convection preheating chamber, cooling chamber with air jacket, final cooling chamber and control system. The furnace was designed specifically for the production of oversized battery coolers. The key to successful production is the perfect temperature uniformity on the 75-inch-wide (1,900-mm-wide) belt and the design of the curtain and cooling chambers.

SECO/VACUUM, a SECO/WARWICK Group company, received an order for a 2-bar vacuum heat-treating furnace from an automotive components manufacturer. The single-chamber furnace, which has a chamber size of 36 x 36 x 48 inches and a load capacity of 3,300 pounds, will increase the company’s annealing production of fuel-injector components. The high-pressure-quench unit will complement an existing SECO/VACUUM furnace in operation at that location since 2002. Because the new furnace is a nearly identical model, they share standard components and will reduce the necessary inventory of spare parts.

BMW will invest more than $200 million to construct a 219,000-square-foot press shop at its South Carolina plant. The investment will create more than 200 new jobs. The new press shop, which will start production in the summer of 2024, will take raw coils of steel, cut them into blanks and stamp sheet-metal parts for future BMW models. Those components include hang-on parts such as the vehicle’s four doors, fenders, exterior body sides and lift gate.

SECO/WARWICK received an equipment order from Aalberts Surface Technologies for its hardening plant in Dzierżoniów, Poland. SECO/WARWICK will deliver a two-chamber atmosphere furnace, tempering furnace, endothermic atmosphere generator, and loading and unloading devices along with the auxiliary infrastructure. The AFT-type atmosphere furnace is intended for carburizing, hardening, nitrocarburizing and annealing. It is suited for manufacturing various transmission components. According to Aalberts, the new equipment will increase its capacity in Dzierżoniów and allow the company to expand its business to other eastern European countries.

An automotive manufacturer in China will install a second Nitrex-supplied automated heat-treating cell for nitriding parts. As part of the company’s growth, the cell will be placed adjacent to the first cell to expand production capacity to meet increasing market demand. The investment will allow the company to bring the production process in-house for greater control and flexibility. Nitrex received an order for six continuous flow-through nitriding systems to create the fully automated cell, which is responsible for automatic loading/unloading, processing and transport. Delivery is scheduled for August 2022, and the cell should start operating in the fall.