Just like individuals, each business will have its unique challenges and some commonalities as well. For heat treaters, the need to maintain customer approvals, industry accreditations, equipment calibration and furnace efficiency are vital to their current and future ability to provide heat-treatment services. Yet these are not easy to achieve in optimal conditions, and today’s world is indisputably suboptimal. 

Nitrex, a Novacap portfolio company and a global provider of fully integrated heat-treating solutions and technologies, unveiled a new corporate brand identity. A new logo will be adopted by all the Nitrex business units. For now, the names of the legal entities will not change so customers, suppliers and stakeholders can continue to use the existing names and addresses in all official communication. The new wordmark for United Process Controls leverages its well-known trade name, the UPC initials, in combination with the company’s best-known brand asset, Marathon Monitors, to form UPC-Marathon. G-M Enterprises, the newest addition to the Nitrex Turnkey Systems portfolio, traded its metallic graphic for a single-color wordmark using the same typeface as the other logos with the addition of the tagline, “A Nitrex Company.”

Stream image analysis software v. 2.4.2 includes an improved image analysis solution to measure and rate non-metallic inclusion content in high-purity steel.

Electric furnaces are designed to produce accurate and repeatable temperature, atmosphere, pressure or other conditions within a controlled process.

Super Systems Inc. completed major upgrades to the heat-treating assets at Milacron LLC in Mt. Orab, Ohio. Included in the scope of work were new control cabinets, atmosphere flow panels, SCADA software and a new ammonia dissociator. Equipment addressed as part of the upgrade included two pit nitriders, two pit tempers, one pit carburizer, one integral-quench furnace, one batch temper and one oil quench.

United Process Controls (UPC) upgraded the vacuum furnace controls and automation platform for Woodward Inc., a U.S.-based provider of fuel and control systems for aircraft engines. The new-generation controls provide streamlined reporting for Nadcap compliance as well as seamless integration with the company’s enterprise planning (ERP) system. UPC also equipped a number of new air drying ovens with Protherm 470 programmable controllers with onboard input and output capabilities.

Having graduated from Purdue University with an ME degree, I have been working in manufacturing for 15 years – 10 of those dedicated to heat treat.

The R10 series of fixed infrared sensors is designed for use in OEM equipment and industrial process control and monitoring applications.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has moved from nice to have to operationally critical. Using IoT to automate tasks can improve workforce efficiency, better utilize assets and predict possible failures before they disrupt operations. Yet some organizations face missing out on these IoT benefits because they are unable to on-board tools that help action IoT data.

For thermal-processing industries that need to maximize their productivity in a sustainable way, it’s important to think ahead before investing in new process-automation systems.