Work on the final phase of Keighley Laboratories’ new heat treatment facility is nearing completion; its nitriding furnace is under-going production trials and its sealed quench gaseous nitro-carburising unit was being installed last week. Ancillary process equipment, including a solvent degreaser and pre- and post-treatment washers for removing any surface contaminants, are also being integrated into the streamlined workflow arrangement.

The enhanced facility will undertake more-advanced surface engineering requirements for its existing customer base in the railway, mining, oil and gas and general engineering sectors; it will also open up new applications in the aviation, nuclear power and renewable-energy markets. In due course, the West Yorkshire company (www.keighleylabs.co.uk) is hoping to gain NADCAP accreditation for this new department.

Michael Emmott, divisional commercial director for Keighley Laboratories Heat Treatment division, said: “When we have the new vertical pit, gaseous nitriding facility up and running, we will have among the best, most up-to-date low-temperature low-distortion resources in the independent heat treatment sector — plus the very latest process control software. We’ve already had a lot of interest from customers wanting to send jobs for processing, but we wanted to conduct sufficient trial runs to ensure that we can obtain consistent and repeatable results.”

The gaseous nitriding and nitro-carburising heat treatment processes enhance the surface properties of finished and near-finished metallic components. The gaseous nitriding process promotes wear resistance, while nitro-carburising enhances corrosion resistance; moreover, both of these low-temperature techniques ensure minimal distortion of the workpieces.

The furnace interface is via the latest SuperData SCADA software package, complete with full colour HMI touch-screen. This provides recipe-driven process control, continuous data logging, an EasyTrack load-entry system, paperless recording and rapid access to historical records. Accurate temperature control is achieved by three zones of heating elements.