Can-Eng Furnaces International Ltd. designed, built and delivered a mesh-belt heat-treatment furnace line to Gallos Metal Solutions of Milwaukee, Wis. The continuous atmosphere system will be used primarily for demanding processing, including carbonitriding and carburizing, while allowing for neutral heat treatment with a production capacity up to 4,000 pounds/hour. This high-capacity furnace line is part of Gallos’ expansion and modernization project, which has more than doubled the existing plant square footage, increased capacity and added automation.

Gas carbonitriding is a modified form of the carburizing process and is not a form of nitriding. In this process, both carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) are introduced into the surface of the steel by introducing ammonia (NH3) and a hydrocarbon enriching gas into the furnace atmosphere in order to add nitrogen to the carburized case as it is being produced.

Service Heat Treating, a commercial heat-treating company located in Milwaukee, Wis., has developed an alternative heat-treatment process known as WearAll that has shown to provide better wear resistance than carbonitriding for a number of critical-service components.

The terms sound alike and often cause confusion, but nitrocarburizing and carbonitriding are distinct heat-treating processes.

Carbonitriding studies with a high amount of nitrogen are characterized by adding ammonia to the process gas at a higher rate than the usual 3-5%. This work focuses on the impact of nitrogen on the lifetime of carburized parts (e.g. gears, sprockets, bearings, crankshafts) exposed to Hertzian pressure or fatigue.

You have heard the terms carbonitriding and nitrocarburizing and know they are two different case-hardening processes, but what are the real differences between them?

Ipsen recently shipped a batch atmosphere furnace and ancillary equipment to Metal Treaters Inc.