Heat Treating Services Guide
Modern Industries is your regional leader in commercial heat treating. We take pride in our modern facilities, advanced process techniques, and state-of-the-art network systems.
With convenient locations throughout Pennsylvania, Modern is the largest source for heat treating in Northwestern Pennsylvania and we regularly provide our services to companies from the automotive, aeronautical, aerospace, medical, military, and tool & die industries.
Here you’ll learn more about how heat treatment works, the services we offer, the industries we serve, and why our customers choose Modern Industries.
What Is Heat Treating, and How Does It Work?
Most processes conducted on metals, including cutting and welding, produce heat. Metal is heated and its metallurgical structure changes. Heat treatment can be used to restore a metal to its original form or enhance its existing characteristics.
Heat treatment is a process by which metal is heated to its melting point, held at that temperature, and then cooled in a controlled environment so that it undergoes the desired mechanical changes. Metals are usually heat treated to increase their malleability, strength, ductility, or abrasion resistance.
The final result depends on various factors, such as surrounding conditions, heating time, cooling rate, and more. The ideal parameters are determined by the type of heat treatment, the metal substrate, and part size.
Heat Treating Services We Offer
Heat treatment encompasses a variety of processes. At Modern Industries, we perform these heat treating services:
- Batch Processing: We can perform these processes on specific quantities of material at a time.
- Carburizing: Carburizing involves case hardening a ferrous metal so that the outer surface of the substrate.
- Hardening: Hardening is a process whereby a metal increases in hardness.
- Annealing: Annealing heats the metal to a specified temperature, holds it at that temperature, and cools it at a certain rate. This process softens the metal, often for improved machinability, cold working compatibility, and dimensional stability.
- Carbonitriding: Similar to carburizing, carbonitriding case hardens ferrous metals by diffusing a nitrogen and carbon layer on the outside layer of the component.
- Normalizing: This process heats ferrous metals to a temperature above the transformation range and cools them, all in a protective atmosphere like a vacuum heat treating oven.
- Deep Case Carburizing: This process allows the metal parts to absorb shock and withstand stress without material loss while boosting the components’ wear resistance and strength.
- CNC Straightening: This post-heat treatment process involves moving the metal part on a straightening press to achieve a specific tolerance.
- Aging: Modern Industries can age metals to meet the latest AMS specifications.
- Solution Treating: This heat treatment process heats the alloy to a certain temperature, holds it at that temperature long enough for a constituent to enter the solid solution, then quickly quenches the metal so it retains the solution’s properties.
- Continuous Belt Processing: In continuous belt processing, we have the capability to quench components with oil, polymer, or water.
- Induction Hardening: This is a rapid, efficient process that uses localized heating, where only some areas of the metal are heated while others stay cool. The depth of the hardened surface layer will depend on the customer’s needs.
- Vacuum Processing: We use nitrogen gas, argon gas, and oil quenching in our vacuum processes.
- Nitriding and Ferritic Nitrocarburizing: Nitriding, or ferritic nitrocarburizing, is a case hardening process that allows nitrogen atoms to diffuse into the surface of ferrous metal. Properties of nitrided metal include excellent fatigue-resistant, wear-resistant, anti-welding, anti-seizing, and anti-galling properties.
- Stress Relieving: These processes reduce the risk of a metal part deforming or cracking in future heat treatment processes. Stress relieving also makes metals easier to machine following heat treatment and enhances overall part performance.
- Aluminum Processing (6-Second Quench): This quick six-second aluminum quench is done in our aging furnaces.
- Tempering: Tempering heats a normalized or hardened ferrous metal to increase ductility and reduce hardness. We have more than 30 tempering furnaces to achieve the results you require.
- Deep Freezing: We perform cryogenic deep freezing at temperatures as low as -300 °F.
- Carbon Restoration: This involves replacing lost carbon from the surface of a ferrous metal part.
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Post Heat Treat Cleaning: These processes clear away debris and imperfections from the surface of the metal after heat treatments.
- Sand Blasting: Sand blasting involves blasting abrasive sand to smooth the surface of the part.
- Shot Blasting: Similar to sand blasting, shot blasting uses abrasive media like ground nut shells or steel shot to remove dirt, rust, or other impurities from the component surface. Shot blasting also prepares substrates for future coating or painting processes.
- Wet & Dry Tumbling: These polishing processes give substrates a superior shine.
- Surface Cleaning and Preparation: These are mechanical or chemical methods that use solvents, abrasive media, acids, water jets, and/or heat to enhance the finish of a heat-treated metal part.
- Support Systems: Our Computerized Furnace Controlling System and Furnace Management Network Systems allow us to continuously control and track important heat treating parameters. We also offer three-way gas analyses of CO2, CO, and CH4, as well as O2 probes.
Why Our Clients Choose Heat Treating Services From Modern Industries
Modern Industries is the leading heat treating provider in Northwestern Pennsylvania because of the crucial advantages we offer our customers, including:
- Metallurgical Testing Laboratory: Our in-house laboratory allows us to perform materials testing and complex research to meet our clients’ needs. Staffed by our professional, degreed scientists, Modern Industries provides microanalysis, non-destructive testing, metallurgical analysis, failure analysis, and much more.
- Value-added logistics services: We offer logistics and corporate trucking and value-added services to our customers to ensure they receive high-quality parts on time.
- Comprehensive digital archive: We digitally track and archive processing variables for at least seven years, so our customers can return to us year after year and receive streamlined services every time.
- Quality Certifications: Our heat treatment facilities are ISO 9001:2015, IATF-16949:2016, and NADCAP-certified. See the full list of our quality certifications here.
- Trusted local partnerships: We leverage our partnerships with local plating, galvanizing, tinning, and forging companies to provide customers with a full-service experience.
Industries We Serve
Some of the industries we serve include:
- Aerospace: Aerospace components should be able to withstand extreme conditions such as high pressures and temperatures. We heat treat difficult part configurations that include pump gears, helical gears, double spiral bevel gears, shafts up to 40” long, auxiliary gearbox parts, and aircraft landing gear parts.
- Automotive: Some of the heat treatment services we offer to the automotive industry include case hardening, tempering, and oil quenching. In heat treating steel, we supply the automotive industry with water pump shafts, carburized ring and pinion gear sets, and universal joints.
- Tool & Die: Some of the components we process include aluminum dies, molds, metal dies, cutting tools, rotary anvils, gears, transmission housing dies, and automotive tooling.
- Rail: We process automotive drive train components such as bearing assemblies, rail clips, diesel injectors, and diesel engines. Common heat treatment services for this industry include oil quenching, hardening, and tempering.
- Medical Equipment and Devices: Heat treatment is vital for the strength and longevity of medical equipment and devices like dental tools, surgical implants, bone saws and screws, battery contacts, capacitor cans, clamps, cases, clips, shields, knee joints, and sidelocks.
Heat Treating and Thermal Processing From Modern Industries
We are the premier heat treating provider in Northwestern Pennsylvania and one of the largest in the tri-state area. Modern Industries regularly provides full heat treating services to the aerospace, automotive, military, tool & die, and medical industries.
We are ISO, NADCAP, and IATF certified to provide comprehensive heat treating services, such as:
- Carburizing
- Carbo-nitriding
- Hardening & tempering
- Nitriding
- Ferritic nitro-carburizing (triniding)
- Short cycle nitriding
- Vacuum processing
- Induction hardening
- Aluminum heat treatment
- Normalizing/stress relieving/annealing
- Cryogenic deep freezing
- Carbon restoration
- Sand blasting
- Tumble shot blasting
- Table shot blasting
- Vacuum brazing
- 100% hardness testing
- Dimensional inspections, CMM available
All process variables are computer uploaded and downloaded. All documentation and data will be stored for at least seven years. To start your heat treating project, request a quote from us today.
Modern Industries
