Heat Treatment
Abbey Forged Products Heat Treatment
One of the most crucial parts of the manufacturing process at Abbey Forged Products is heat treatment.
Every Purchase Order on Abbey Forged Products manufacturing process goes through a strict contract review, technical & quality audit and a production manufacturing plan which is logged within our bespoke computerised system – allowing repeatability of manufacture time and again.
For each product manufacturing plan, section size is assessed, alongside the grade and customer test requirement / outcomes. The heat treatment dept then receives detailed technical instruction regarding this critical process, in order to maximise the final properties required, in line with the customers demands. This will encompass furnace load plan, start temperature, rate of increase, time at temp, quench medium etc.
Abbey has a wide range of heat-treating furnaces on site. All have been approved to;
- RRP 62004
- AMS 2750
- RPS917
- API6A
- ASTM A991
- NORSOK M650 Rev 4
Allowing both water and oil quench manufacturing to take place.
A number of both 4 tonne & 10 tonne natural gas fired furnaces controlled via internal type R thermocouples with fully automated rail transfer handling systems, ensure consistent and accurate transfer times.
Water quench operation is available on all furnaces with a maximum quench delay of 60 seconds on the 4 tonne furnaces and 40 seconds on the 10 tonne furnaces and water quench tanks ranging from 20,000 to 120,000 litres, fully agitated using impeller driven agitation methods.
Temperature of the water is controlled utilising an external cooling system, with a magnetic filtration system, allowing further stringent practices to be monitored.
Fully digitised photographic capture of each stage of treatments form part of the certificate of conformity documentation pack.
The range of furnaces enables full flexibility on both load & batch sizes including long bar product.
The treatments that can be carried out include:
- Annealing
- Normalising
- Quench and Temper
- Solution Annealing
- Stabilise Annealing
- Age Hardening
- Precipitation Hardening
This allows a comprehensive solution to your heat treatment demands within the production process of critical component parts and forged bars in materials including:
- Carbon steels
- Special steels
- Austenitic Stainless steels
- Martensitic Stainless steels
- Ferritic Stainless steels
- Precipitation Hardening Stainless steels
- Duplex & Super Duplex
- Super Austenitic steels
- Nickel based steels
All processes are regularly reviewed by grade, treatment and product and routinely studied for continuous improvement in manufacturing techniques to maximise mechanical properties repeatability.