Aubert & Duval, a French producer of superalloys, high-performance steels, aluminum and titanium alloys in the form of bars, powders and forgings, created a new heat-treatment line. The line, which will completely replace the company’s current heat-treatment line 3, has been designed to achieve the following objectives: reduction of safety risks and improvement of working conditions; process and quality control; productivity and flexibility; and reduction of environmental footprint. Almost all the parts produced at Aubert & Duval’s Pamiers’ facility undergo heat treatment. Mastering these processes is central to the company’s industrial mission, which involves working on the most demanding projects in the aerospace, energy and defense industries.

Burloak Technologies Inc., a division of Samuel, Son & Co. Ltd., established an additive-manufacturing center in Camarillo, Calif. With the addition of this facility, the company becomes North America’s first multi-site AM services provider. The new 25,000-square-foot facility bolsters the manufacturing capacity available at Burloak’s 65,000-square-foot Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence in Oakville, Ontario. Between the two facilities, the company offers laser powder-bed fusion, electron-beam powder bed, metal binder jet, and powder and wire DED technologies. In addition, Burloak offers post-production services including design, engineering, CNC machining, heat treatment and finishing.

Z Capital Partners, the private-equity fund management arm of Z Capital Group (ZCG), entered into a definitive agreement to sell Premier Thermal Solutions LLC (PTS), a provider of metal-processing services, to an affiliate of Aalberts N.V. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year. PTS provides commercial metal-processing services to a variety of industries, including aerospace, defense, automotive, heavy truck, energy, heavy equipment and other industrial end markets. Since opening its first plant in Lansing, Mich., in 1978, the company has expanded to 10 plants across the Midwest.

Can-Eng Furnaces International Ltd. has been awarded a contract to design and manufacture two 50,000-pound-capacity car-bottom furnaces for one of the world’s largest metals and mining companies. These custom-engineered furnaces will support the manufacture of critical metal hot-rolling machine components used in the production rolling of high value-added automotive steel sheet and plate. The two systems, although located side by side, will utilize completely independent control systems to allow flexibility for scheduling and maintenance. Both furnaces will be interconnected to the larger plant-wide system for data acquisition and trending capabilities. 

U.K.-based Wallwork Group invested approximately $900,000 to purchase two Rübig plasma nitriding furnaces for the heat treatment of new and replacement components in the aerospace and automotive industries. The first furnace is scheduled to be installed in Wallwork’s Cambridge plasma nitriding center in August. The company is also adding a dedicated area for inspection of case depth, structure and other quality aspects of the nitriding process at the facility, which will have six operational plasma nitriders.

Armil CFS Inc. shipped two natural-gas-fired box furnaces with integrated afterburners to a West Coast manufacturer of aerospace components. The furnaces, which have an operating temperature range of 450-1800°F with +/-25°F uniformity in the work zone, will be used to burn out and preheat investment casting molds. The Tru-Heat furnaces have an inside chamber size of 8 feet wide x 7 feet deep  with a working height of 4 feet. For energy savings, they are programmed with weekend mode and automated afterburner idle.

TMK will upgrade pipe heat-treatment equipment at its Pervouralsk Pipe Plant (PNTZ) in Russia to reduce resource consumption and expand its size range of high-tech products. A roller-hearth furnace in a tube drawing shop has already been upgraded. The new technology allowed TMK to decrease the lower temperature limit in the furnace by 200C. The plant can now produce new products – ball bearings, precision and other pipes for the aerospace and automotive industries – with the mechanical properties required by Russian and European quality standards. As part of the upgrade, the furnace was equipped with a new digital process control system that runs a comprehensive equipment diagnostic and automatically adjusts the temperature parameters. PNTZ plans to upgrade two more furnaces in its tube drawing shops in 2021.

Lindberg/MPH shipped an electrically heated spray washer to the defense industry. The spray washer is designed as a companion to a heat-treating process. It washed the parts prior to and/or after heat treatment. The chamber within is designed to accept a standard load with dimensions of 30 inches wide x 48 inches deep x 30 inches high, including a clearance for loading the baskets or fixtures. The maximum operating temperature is 185°F, and the normal operating temperature is 160°F.

Most heat treaters have been told by in-house customers, as well as external customers, that we need to have the component “heat treated without distortion.” That is an impossibility.

SECO/WARWICK will deliver two vacuum furnaces to Flansch-Tech, a specialist in aluminum and steel forging, in Budapest. According to SECO/WARWICK, one of the vacuum furnaces will be the largest in Hungary. The Vector with horizontal charge loading is equipped with a 15-bar nitrogen cooling gas-pressure system and a production work area of 900 mm wide x 900 mm high x 1,200 mm long). It will be used for the heat treatment of tool steels – mostly dedicated to hardening and tempering – and will allow Flansch-Tech to process larger parts.