VAC AERO Opens its Second Facility in Poland
First established in 2003 in Kalisz, Poland VAC AERO has now opened a second facility located in the town of Rzeszow in southeast Poland. VAC AERO’s Polish divisions offer vacuum heat treating and brazing, vacuum carburizing, air plasma spray (APS) and HVOF protective coatings, as well as corrosion and oxidation resistant paint coatings. This will VAC AERO’s sixth vacuum heat treating, brazing and coating facility worldwide.
Tool steel heat treatment is based on a simple premise, that to obtain the optimum performance from any given grade, every step of the heat treating process including stress relief, austenitizing, quenching, cryogenic treatment and multiple tempers must be done exactly correct. Absolute control of both process and equipment variability is one of many reasons why vacuum processing is popular in tool steel heat treatment.
Centerline Eutectics in Ni-brazing
Joint clearances must be tight for effective Ni-brazing. Nickel-based brazing filler metals (BFM) can leave a hard, non-ductile eutectic phase in the middle of a brazed joint. The hard, non-ductile metallurgical phase-structures that form upon solidification of Ni-brazed joints must be carefully controlled, or else they can, and will, result in cracks inside the joint in stressful mechanical or thermal-cycling service inside the joint.
Revealing the Microstructure of Tool Steels
After we have properly prepared our tool steel specimens, it is generally best to examine them as-polished before etching unless we are simply doing a routine test, for depth of decarburization, degree of spheroidization, and so forth. Examination of selectively etched tool steel microstructures by light microscopy provides more information than standard etchants, such as nital, picral or Vilella’s reagent.
The Monty, May 2006 Issue
This is a story about globalization, a smaller world or the exchange of information technology around the world, call it what you will it's all the same thing at the end of the day.
The photo below shows on the left
While we at "The Monty" realize that this news item will probably not excite too many North American readers it probably should as a sign of things to come. In this case we're seeing North American vacuum heat treating technology being applied in
