To: Professor Jack
From: Paul Brinks
Subject: Hansen Balk Tour
Hansen Balk is a steel heat treating company located in Grand Rapids, MI. With 30 years of experience and 50 operating furnaces, they can handle your job, big or small. Following is a description of the many different heat treating processes they offer.
The annealing (stress relief) process is used to bring the material back to its original properties. This makes the part workable by increasing the ductility and reducing the hardness. The annealing process starts out by heating the metal to a specific temperature and holding it there for a specified time. The metal is then cooled at a slow rate. Hansen Balk uses an “atmosphere” environment when annealing so the treated metals come out of the furnace with a red oxide build up on the surface. To remove the oxide the parts are bead blasted.
When you want to harden a metal to a specified hardness the process has to be very controlled. Hansen Balk uses a group of gas and electric fired vacuum furnaces. The furnaces have a +/-5 degree Fahrenheit temperature capability and use thermocouples mounted on the part to monitor specific locations on the part. Depending on the material that is being treated, the furnaces will cycle through a heating and cooling process to yield a specific hardness. The furnaces are under a vacuum pressure with a nitrogen or argon atmosphere to virtually eliminate any surface oxidation.
Ionitriding (TM) is one of the more advanced plating processes the Hansen Balk uses. The process basically uses an electric field which generates a plasma. The plasma is then deposited on the surface of the part, resulting in a very shallow but hard surface.
Hansen Balk has a broad range of heat treating capabilities. This is very useful to most manufacturing environments.