Synchronized Heat Treatment For Totally Integrated Manufacturing-Lines

Heat treatment of gear components traditionally takes place in a central hardening shop. However this separation between machining and heat treatment results in high costs for transportation and logistics within the production-plant.

In order to totally integrate heat treatment into the manufacturing line and in order to synchronize heat-treatment with machining, ALD Vacuum Technologies has developed a new heat treatment cell. Following the philosophy of „One Piece Flow“ the parts are

-       taken one by one from the soft machining unit,

-       heat treated in time with the cycle-time of soft machining (“Synchronized heat treatment”) and then

-       passed down one by one to the hard machining unit.

To allow for a rapid case hardening, the components are low pressure carburized at high temperatures (1050°C) followed by gas quenching.

The paper shows results achieved with the new process technology applied in the new heat treatment cell.