Hard lessons learned from the 2020 pandemic taught us that we needed to rebuild and re-establish our U.S. supply-chain ecosystem. The systemic shock to our global supply chains left us with bottlenecks, shortages and an acute awareness of our overdependence on imports.

Retech, part of the SECO/WARWICK Group, is completing an order with Livnica Preciznih Odlivaka (LPO), a foundry in Serbia, for a vacuum induction melting (VIM) furnace. The 50-kg furnace will be used for high-speed precision investment casting. Precision casting using the lost-wax process will significantly improve and accelerate the foundry’s production capabilities. A great advantage of the furnace is the very short time between loading the mold and the start of casting. Parts manufactured at LPO are installed in engines used in the commercial aviation industry.

Here is a complete list of all the feature articles – by topic – that appeared in Industrial Heating in 2020. The month each article appeared in is included. All articles are hyperlinked for your convenience.

Anhui Anhuang Machinery Co. Ltd. placed an order with SMS group for a fully automatic closed-die forging line for pistons. The 2,500-ton line consists of a fully automatic closed-die forging press and an induction heating system from SMS Elotherm for heating the forging blanks. Anhui Anhuang will be one of the first automotive suppliers in China that is capable of manufacturing pistons for cars and trucks in a fully automated process. Commissioning is scheduled for the second quarter of 2022.

If you’re at all like me, you wonder which articles get the most attention on our website. Every year we publish around 45 feature articles, and at the end of the year we gather statistics to see which ones get the most page views. So, without further ado, here are the five most-viewed articles on www.industrialheating.com based on page views. This ranking applies only to articles published in 2020.

Taylor-Winfield Technologies (TWT), a metal joining solutions providers, announced the opening of its fully equipped laser coil joining research-and-development laboratory in Youngstown, Ohio. The lab is an extension of the company’s existing full-service metal joining and induction heat-treatment laboratory. The laser laboratory is equipped with a full-width 1,930-mm coil joining solid-state fiber laser welder with induction pre- and post-weld heat treatment. It is available for customer sampling and proof-of-process validation for the application of laser coil joining in a process line.

What if you plugged an induction heating system into a wall outlet, flipped the “on” switch, and not only produced a 100% output efficiency but amplified the output by more than double the input?.

Recently, however, aerospace manufacturers are researching the options of producing thermoplastic composites in an out-of-autoclave press consolidation technique because it reduces the production cycle from 4-7 hours to 10-30 minutes for small and mid-size parts.

The PICO-S induction generator’s compact and portable design, intuitive operation menu and easy plug-and-play commissioning allow for use in a wide range of induction applications – from brazing to shrink-fitting and from die hardening to annealing.

Industrial Heating, during a Q&A session at FNA 2020, announced that it will support the Reshoring Initiative with a $2,500 sponsorship. The mission of the Reshoring Initiative is to bring good, well-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States by assisting companies to more accurately assess their total cost of offshoring and to shift collective thinking from offshoring is cheaper to local reduces the total cost of ownership. As part of this new relationship, the Reshoring Initiative will provide Industrial Heating with editorial content throughout 2021.