Founded in 1978 by William Pociask, P&L Heat Treating and Grinding began operations in a 2,500-square-foot building with only two employees, two austenitizing furnaces, two tempering furnaces and a rotary surface grinder.

Bodycote recently held an official opening ceremony at its new heat-treatment facility in Prague, Czech Republic. The plant, now fully operational and supporting customer requirements, provides a range of heat-treatment services and will support the automotive and general industrial markets in the region.

Many in the thermal-processing industry can recite dew-point conversion tables with closed eyes.

Refractory material is designed to be very durable, withstand extreme service conditions and defy mechanical abuse in many different types of thermal-processing operations.

As a metallurgist, I am frequently asked for assistance on metallurgical issues relating to alloy products and selection. Here are the most frequently asked questions and a guide to answering these questions.

As heat treaters, it is critical to be able to justify the purchase of new heat-treatment equipment to management by being able to prepare a return-on-investment (ROI) analysis.

What started with one furnace in one plant is now four plants, over 270,000 square feet of space and 64 million pounds of monthly capacity. So is the story of Heat Treating Services Corporation of America (HTS).

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Accurate Brazing, a full-service provider of specialized heat-treating solutions, will add hot isostatic pressing to its thermal-processing capabilities with the installation of a hot isostatic press (HIP) from Quintus Technologies. The press is equipped with Quintus’ proprietary uniform rapid cooling (URC), a feature that combines HIP and heat treatment in a single process and improves material properties of parts designed for mission-critical applications. It will be installed in Accurate Brazing’s recently opened facility in Greenville, S.C.

Solar Manufacturing shipped a horizontal front-loading vacuum furnace to Georgia Southern University (GSU) in Statesboro, Ga. GSU will be using the furnace primarily for vacuum thermal-processing research and development of various iron-based alloys, including additive-manufactured parts. The furnace includes a graphite-shielded hot zone and heating elements. It has a work-zone size of 12 inches wide x 12 inches high x 18 inches deep and a weight capacity of 250 pounds (114 kg).