In April 2020, Reed Miller interviewed Mike McConkey, a dedicated customer-service engineer for Surface Combustion. McConkey, an expert on controlled-atmosphere furnace operation, maintenance and safety, answered some frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the technology and offered some maintenance tips. This article is a condensed and edited version of that interview.

Plicast Al-Rezist is a line of low-cement, aluminum-resistant refractories expressly engineered to mitigate damaging and costly corundum growth in furnaces. 

Mike McConkey of Surface Combustion discusses the Allcase^® batch integral quench furnace and RX^® endothermic gas atmosphere generator.  With the largest installed base in North America, our dedicated customer service engineers support our customers every day.

The heart of the vacuum furnace system is just as critical as the heart of the human body. Just as it is important to keep your heart healthy and pumping, it is crucial to keep your vacuum furnace system healthy and pumping.

Once again, our readers weigh in on the best articles in 2018. This time it is in the melting/forming/joining category. Interested in what they have to say? Check out the list that follows.

OnStamp by GHI is a technology designed for moving blanks through the furnace.

When large industrial vacuum brazing furnaces begin to produce customer parts that show discoloration instead of a pristine stainless steel finish or joints where the brazing material has refused to flow properly, production is quickly halted. Easy-to-find-and-fix leaks can take the furnace down for a half of a day, and more downtime is likely.

Pyro-Putty 653 is an inorganic, single-part, ceramic and metal-filled paste that bonds tenaciously to cast iron, steel and stainless steel.