TurboTreater® and Turbo-Vac: The best in vacuum heat treatment
STC offers premium quality vacuum heat treatment using the latest technology from Abar Ipsen. Our 12 bar TurboTreater® furnace, with convection heating, has enabled STC to gain Ford (FMC) provisional supplier status, recognising STC as a heat treatment supplier for high pressure die casting applications. The patented nozzle design, cylindrical hot zone and sophisticated computer control gives the TurboTreater® a competitive edge in quenching large workpieces, up to 1 tonne, reliably and repeatedly.
Our 6 bar Turbo-Vac furnaces feature convection heating and directional nozzles for through load cooling, giving advantages in uniform quenching of multi-component or slender workpieces.
The benefits of our combined technologies include
- Minimal workpiece distortion
- Excellent temperature uniformity (±5°C)
- Reduced cycle times – quicker customer service
- Metallurgically clean surfaces – eliminating additional processes to remove scale and oxide
- Ecologically clean and safe
- Reliable, reproducible results due to fully programmable computer control
- QA documentation can be supplied with every furnace batch.
- Choice of radial or directional quenching to suit furnace load.
Heat treatment processes and materials suitable for Turbo-Vac
Surface Technology Coatings specialise in premium quality vacuum through hardening and tempering of high speed steels, hot work steels, cold work steels and martensitic stainless steels and age hardening steels.
The aim is to provide the customer with a heat treated product that has the optimum combination of hardness and microstructure while keeping distortion to a minimum.
Quality Control
Surface Technology Coatings has built its reputation on being able to offer a high quality, reproducible and guaranteed product back to the customer every time. Having the latest testing and analytical equipment, our metallurgical laboratory can process test samples for certification of every process batch. This commitment to quality allows us to be a Quality Endorsed Company (ISO 9001:2008) and meet today’s stringent quality requirements.
Our experienced technicians accurately record all processing parameters and monitor all processing variables. They will work directly with your material, design or manufacturing engineers to determine the optimum processing methods to meet your requirements.
Blu (Steam Oxide)
Steam Oxide is produced in a controlled dry steam furnace at an elevated temperature. The steam treatment of ferrous metals forms a thin, hard, well-adhered, blue-black oxide film, called magnetite (Fe3O4). The process is often referred to as ‘blueing’ or ‘blackening’.
The oxide layer produced is porous thereby retaining oil which lowers friction in ferrous applications, thus avoiding the problems of pick-up, cold welding on taps and ‘built-up edge’ on cutting edges.
The Steam Oxide process is environmentally friendly using water + heat to produce dry steam.
Applications and Benefits
- Ferrous Metals, eg HSS
- Prevents chip build-up on the cutting edges
Improved performance with
- Cutting sticky ferrous materials
- Increased corrosion resistance
*Not recommended in cutting applications for very soft or non-ferrous materials.
