Day “D”
Few people remember what happened on May 18, 1992. On the one hand, it has been 29 years, on the other hand, the significance of that day is that it is important especially for me and for a few of my friends, today mostly retired. That day, my life changed fundamentally. We managed to establish the first custom tempering plant in the former Czechoslovakia called HT-PROGRES.
It is difficult to list everything we have managed to accomplish, but we certainly have a few firsts that no one can beat. We were the first to commercially use plasma nitriding or PVD technology in the former Czechoslovakia, we were the first to launch a 10 bar hardening furnace from Fours BMI (by the way, it still works today) and we were also the first to offer low pressure LPN nitriding.
But what I probably appreciate the most is that we started with the Nadca-207 application on the Czech market. This has brought a significant change not only to our thinking and understanding of the nature of vacuum heat treatment, but also to the life of the commercial heat treatment shop or to the life of die casting tool manufacturers. I am deeply convinced of this standard that it is the best that has ever been created for HPGQ (High Pressure Gas Quenching) and has not yet been surpassed in any field.
Fig. 1 – Tempering and hardening furnaces up 10 Bar N2, installed in 1995 in the now not-existing hall in Liberec – Hanychov
Fig. 2 – Plasma nitriding, now installed in the Liberec Technical Museum
I don’t know if our anniversary will be celebrated at Bodycote, I definitely will. And I would also like to thank everyone who contributed to the success of HT-PROGRES, and later Bodycote HT. Especially to co-founders Vladimír Procházka and Helena Kučerová, but also to their successors such as Pavel Ryvola, Klára Tesárková or Mirek Zatloukal. These puppies have gone through the whole stage of development, from school to the current important positions, and thus remain the bearers of what we have put into our business.
Liberec, 18th of May, 2021
Jiří Stanislav
