The Monty, August 2004 Issue

Quite frankly our goal at "The Monty" is to know everything about the heat treating industry in North America (the whole world is our goal but that’s down the road a bit). Obviously we’re not there yet but we keep learning more and more with every day that goes by. One facet of this is to know all the new heat treat equipment being sold and where it is going.

Let’s start off with new vacuum furnaces being sold in North America. We contacted several of the new furnace builders and quite frankly they were virtually all very forthcoming with this information. While there certainly was not a 100% consensus they were by and large fairly close. So what do you think? 50 new vacuums for 2004? 200? How about an estimated 100 in North America which includes vacuum carburizing for a combined total of $40-$45 million US. Two of the larger manufacturers were in complete agreement with the others guessing lower at least one a LOT lower. One manufacturer guessed Vacuum Carburizing at $8 million US for this year with the vast bulk of it divided between ECM and ALD. My personal feeling is that this figure is a little bit low as 3 large orders have already been placed this year with probably 2 or 3 more to come. One of the difficulties in estimating the total market is the number of players.

A reasonably complete list includes (in no particular order) VFS, Ipsen, Vacuum Industries, AVS, PVT (Consarc), Thermal Technology (Brew), GM, Solar Mfg., VacAero, Surface, Centorr, Seco, Hayes (AFC Holcroft), ALD, EDI Hethering and ECM. Keep in mind also that all of these vacuum furnaces are not necessarily destined for what I would consider "traditional" heat treating. Ipsen International as you would expect remains the largest player in the market with a very nice order book.

One very interesting point virtually every company brought up was that this total was a fraction of what it was several years ago, indeed one individual suggested maybe a third the number of new orders being placed of just 4 years ago. What this means is that the new furnace builders have been relying on spare parts and service (generally this accounts for about half of total sales) to keep the lights on, which of course is just like the atmosphere and induction guys have been doing. A couple of exceptions to this are Ipsen which of course makes a lot of other types of furnaces also, GM Enterprises, same thing and Vac Aero who are one of the larger commercial vacuum heat treaters around. So there you have it an estimated 100 new vacuum furnace orders in North America for 2004. By the way keep checking this page out as I’m sure there will be a few comments to the effect that I don’t know up from down. August 6/04