Advancing Heat Treatment Processes into the Twenty-First Century

With all of the advances in technology and manufacturing in the last 100 years, it’s important for heat treating companies to keep up with the times, ensuring that we’ve learned from the past while innovating to provide the most efficient and effective processes possible. 

Akron Steel Treating Company (AST®) is one of the only commercial heat treating companies that is also a member of the Forging Industry Association (FIA). Since 2012, we have served on the FIA’s Technical Committee to help integrate the forging and the heat treatment processes that yield the final properties for the forged part end users—more added value from heat treating delivered to the end users per BTU expended and less post-heat treatment correction costs.

Together with our consulting affiliate Integrated Heat Treating Solutions, LLC (IHTS) we are currently part of a two-year project with Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) for the Forging Industry Education and Research Foundation (FIERF). Our goal is to bring other FIA members up to speed on all our developmental work that has been done at AST during the latter half of the 20th century. In addition, we strive to accelerate the integration of computer modeling tools for 21st century heat treating metallurgies into modern part design, and to familiarize forgers, end users, and their “downstream” forging heat treaters with all the available technologies that can help them reduce the cost of post-forging heat treating processes.

AST combines over 78 years of molten salt quenching, traditional oil quenching and vacuum to gas quenching experience with 23 years of intensive water quenching development and practice in our 6,000 gallon "IQ" tank.

We believe this research and development work with a team of partners from across our region will help to advance the heat treating process around the world, creating a more efficient, effective, and affordable approach to heat treatments and forging.

If you’d like to learn more about our work with Case Western Reserve, the Forging Industry Education and Research Foundation, and the Forging Industry Association, we’d be happy to send you our recent research or meet with you to discuss how Akron Steel Treating can serve as your 21st century partner in heat treating.