ECM’s dedication to providing captive and commercial heat treaters vacuum furnace solutions continues into 2021 with two multi-chamber system orders for low pressure carburizing.

After shipping more than 60 vacuum heating chambers in 2020 for existing and new heat treat applications, it’s clear that ECM’s commitment to customer satisfaction and application solutions continues to thrive into the new year. Advanced automation technology, including robotics, and decades of experience are also proving to be a driving force behind this surge in activity including those applications outside the LPC-HPGQ sector, including, but not limited to: multiple tool steel processing systems, brazing applications, and Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) systems.

With the automotive industry embracing revolutionary environmental policy and process changes, an automotive supplier of innovative driveline solutions recently invested in an ECM Flex system for vacuum carburizing. This system is estimated to reduce CO2 emissions significantly for vacuum carburizing vs. an existing atmosphere carburizing furnace. A second Flex vacuum furnace was purchased by a hydraulic pump manufacturer. For this customer, the modular flexibility of the Flex furnace was the most important advantage, especially since the furnace is built as a standard system with the possibility to further expand its capacity and/or to upgrade to a high level of automation (robots, AGVs, vision systems, or other 4.0 elements). In addition to modularity, several processes can be handled in the Flex furnace, such as: low pressure carburizing (LPC), vacuum tempering and a combination of vacuum sintering followed by hardening.