Sometimes it seems unbelievable to me how little we know about the world of large-scale heat treatment. An article was published in The Monty about the TOP in-house heat treatment operations in the USA. The first two places are clearly occupied by ECM. And the fact that they have 64 carburizing chambers at the Ford Motor Company? This is simply the incredible performance of ECM furnaces. But the capacities in Grenoble also correspond to this, they are filled to 100% and are spewing out more and more multifunctional heating chambers and tunnels for Flex systems.
TOP 1
Ford Motor Company, Sharonville Transmission Facility. We are quite comfortable in suggesting that the Ford Sharonville, Ohio Transmission facility is the single largest captive heat treat facility in North America. Ford was one of the first automotive companies to embrace vacuum carburizing and the end result is that this plant now has 64 ECM LPC cells with 20 bar nitrogen gas quench systems.
TOP 2
GKN Driveline, Newton, North Carolina. In our second position we find another automotive parts supplier, GKN in Newton, NC. While not one of the first to invest in vacuum carburizing systems they certainly jumped on the bandwagon after vacuum carburizing proved it’s value. The company now has 39 LPC cells provided by ECM with 20 bar nitrogen quenching.
https://themonty.com/project/15-largest-captive-heat-treats-north-america/
Jiří Stanislav
October 31, 2024