Controlling the Induction Hardening Process – Success Story

At Zion Industries we are always interested in partnering with our customers to help them overcome difficult heat treating challenges. Recently Zion Industries started working on a project with a major manufacturer of material handling equipment. During our initial meetings it was evident that this customer was deeply concerned with the quality of their products, and we were excited about the opportunity to work with them to help them develop a superior product.

The heat treat supplier that had been supplying the induction hardening process did not seem to have a reliable repeatable process. This posed many challenges to the equipment maker who was always trying to work around inconsistencies in the process. During heat treat operations, the dimensions of the piece can and do change. The supplier did not appear to have reliable process controls in place, as their amount of variance from lot to lot caused excessive, unreliable dimensional changes, even though the heat treat parameters appeared to be met.

At Zion Industries we approached this challenge as we do any new project. After careful consideration and engineering of the tooling and process parameters we felt confident that we could provide a reliable and repeatable process. We processed our first batch of parts and the results were extremely favorable as all of the heat treat parameters were met, and the amount of distortion in the parts had been reduced by a factor of 6! After our first trials we were excited, as was the user, but the repeatability of the process had yet to be proven. After we processed several more batches with minimal distortion and met all of the parameters, the customer felt confident enough to purchase new tooling for their ID spline processes and moved the work to Zion Industries to begin production.

We were extremely pleased to be able to help this customer with their heat treating problem. The customer’s desire to partner with us through the development process proved extremely beneficial. Working together we were able to provide a superior product. We look forward to seeing your difficult application.

Lou Ghinga
Plant Manager, Valley City, OH
Zion Industries, Inc.