UK-based metallurgical services laboratory and heat treatment specialist Keighley Laboratories is nearing completion of a heat treatment facility, comprising a nitriding furnace and a nitrocarburising furnace, at its West Yorkshire headquarters.

Keighley Laboratories reports that construction is complete and the company is currently running production trials on the furnace to ensure high performance when it is commissioned by month end.

“We’ve had a lot of interest from customers wanting to send jobs for processing, but we want to conduct sufficient trial runs to obtain repetitive results, which will ensure that we meet the quality and precision standards that the industry expects from Keighley Laboratories,” explains company heat treatment division commercial director Michael Emmott.

The facility is housed in a 5 000 square foot purpose-built department, with a thermal insulation envelope designed to ensure optimum energy efficiency. Further, the more than £1-million development adds the latest low-temperature, low-distortion thermochemical processes to Keighley Labs’ heat treatment portfolio.

“It will meet more sophisticated surface engineering requirements for our existing customer base in the railway, mining, oil and gas and general engineering sectors, while opening up new applications in the aviation, nuclear power and renewable-energy markets,” Emmott explains.

Gaseous nitriding and nitrocarburising are heat-treatment processes that enhance the surface properties of finished and near-finished metallic components. The gaseous nitriding process promotes wear resistance while nitrocarburising promotes corrosion resistance. These low-temperature techniques ensure minimal distortion of the work pieces.

During the nitriding process, the surface of the ferrous metal is enriched with nitrogen to improve wear resistance, fatigue strength and other characteristics. During the nitrocarburising process, small amounts of carbon are also introduced into the process, resulting in a more flexible compound surface layer, with good lubricant-retention properties, distinct from the classical white layer of gaseous nitriding, states Keighley Laboratories.

“The furnace interface is displayed through the latest SuperData supervisory control and data acquisition software package, complete with a full colour human-machine touch screen interface.

“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 also achieved by three zones of heating elements, controlled by a sophisticated internal cascade system,” says Emmott.

He adds that Keighley Laboratories’ gaseous nitrocarburising sealed quench furnace is a gas-fired unit, which comprises a process-tight chamber with an integrated double-walled quench chamber, enabling the complex heat treatment cycle to take place in a protective environment.

Moreover, the new heat treatment facility will offer gaseous nitriding and both ferritic and austenitic nitrocarburising, the latter of which will enhance indentation resistance. Both methods can be used for upgrading components made from relatively inexpensive, lower-alloy materials.