AFC-Holcroft, Wixom, Mich., reports that a European-based multi-national supplier of forgings for the automotive industry has brought their heat treatment process in-house by investing in an AFC-Holcroft automated non-atmosphere batch heat treatment line to be delivered to an American facility located in the Midwest. The equipment will be used to process raw forgings that will undergo normalizing, tempering, stress relieving and a quench and temper process.
To secure the order, AFC-Holcroft needed to prove to the customer the return on investment. This was accomplished through meetings in the United States and abroad, calculations of costs, visits to customer sites, analysis of production schedules, testing of parts, etc.
“Our customer was very thorough in its consideration of new heat treatment equipment,” says Ron Graham, Sales Engineer for AFC-Holcroft. “They were then outsourcing their heat treatment and needed to ensure that the new equipment met all of the requirements for their various processes. AFC-Holcroft’s Sales, Applications, and Engineering groups all engaged in the process to validate that we were providing the optimal solution to meet their needs.”
The equipment consists of five direct-fired, non-atmosphere batch heat treating furnaces, with automation provided by a SCADA system for a fully automated process.
