Bring Heat Treating Capability to your Machine Shop

If you are one of the thousands of machine shops or prototype houses throughout the country that is routinely outsourcing their heat treatment work to expensive labs with long lead times, we have a suggestion for you:

Consider bringing your heat treating capabilities in-house.

Some of the more common processes that machine shops outsource include:

• Hardening or Tempering of Steel or other metals.
• Small, low volume MIM part production
• Normalizing and Annealing
• Sintering
• Metal Melting for small scale foundry and casting operations.

Heat treatment operations can require different materials from 17-4 PH Stainless, to aluminum or titanium. By bringing heat treatment capability in-house the operation creates a number of advantages for itself over an outsourcing model.

• Complete Control over scheduling of thermal operations
• Low cost to test and prototype small runs of parts.
• Process versatility, as the right furnace technology can cover many different processes.
• Quicker turnaround of material
• Opportunity to experiment with process parameters for optimum process output.

Key to the economics of this of course, is the versatility of the furnace selected for your operations.

CM Furnace Ideas for Machine Shops requiring Heat Treatment Capability

1600 Series box and tube furnaces for batch production

CM Rapid Temp Series  - On your short list for a versatile, reliable, and cost effective multi-purpose furnace technology has to be the CM Rapid Temp Series of furnaces. With multiple chamber sizes, top and bottom loading options, tube and box configurations, as well as a gas sealed option for support of multiple atmosphere’s, these furnaces have among the broadest applicability you will find for the most common heat treatment process operations in MIM prototyping or small production runs.

The “Rapid Temp” series derives its name from the fact that it was designed to have the ability to heat up extremely fast owing to its ultra-high temperature molydisillicide heating elements and its high efficiency, low mass alumina fiber insulation. The Kanthal super molydisilicide heating elements are used, offering fast heat up rates and long life in oxidizing atmospheres. These elements are not subject to normal watt loading limitations and are not affected by thermal shock, therefore heat-up rates are only limited by the capability of the power supply. The electrical resistivity of these elements remains constant over long periods without aging so that individual elements can be replaced without having to match resistance values.

For more information on how our Rapid Temp Furnaces can make economic sense over thermal outsourcing in your Lab or machine shop, call our engineering team today or visit www.cmfurnaces.com.

This content was originally posted at https://cmfurnaces.com/bring-heat-treating-capability-machine-shop/