Heat Treat Industry Articles by ECM USA

ECM USA Super Brands Spotlight in Heat Treat Today's July 2025 Issue

ECM’s all-inclusive vacuum furnace systems easily adapt to your heat treatment requirements to streamline processing, ensure significant cost savings, and maintain high product quality. Our furnace lines range from manual single chambers to large automated and modular installations for simultaneous processing with oil or gas quenching (or both). ECM vacuum furnace systems are supported by more than 50 years of engineering & design expertise and advanced manufacturing, including our patented Infracarb® technology.

Vacuum furnace insight contributions by committee member Dennis Beauchesne, ECM USA General Mgr

Technology of heat treating has not fundamentally changed in many years. Probably the biggest shift in the last 20 years was the introduction of low-pressure carburizing, or as it is also called, vacuum carburizing. This process allows for a more uniform case depth along the flank of the gear for precision grinding or honing. Power honing and grinding can create issues if the heat treating method does not provide a uniform surface hardness and case depth throughout the tooth after these processes.

Excerpt from ECM USA’s article “The Heat Treat Robotic Paradigm Shift” in Heat Treat Today‘s January 2025 issue

Bulk goods-loading (such as clips, links, and other small parts via weight detection) as well as loading and unloading of truck shafts in fixtures and in straightening machines are just a few examples of production areas that can benefit from robotics/automation. Visual recognition systems can identify gears/parts based on the diameter or by the number of teeth on the gear and can then sort them by these features.

Excerpt from Heat Treat Today’s Digital February 2021 Issue answering the question - How does the ECM ECO SYSTEM differ from historic IQ systems?
The heat treatment of steels, particular carburizing, have traditionally operated in a pusher, batch sealed quench or mesh belt furnace with endo gas generators & under a carbon enriched atmosphere. The development of electric furnaces with vacuum technologies have overcome the traditional drawbacks. They add value to heat treatment by making it safer and more efficient by providing superior quality at an optimized cost/performance ratio.