Now that we’re providing more and more flame hardening services for customers, I wanted to share with you some things we’ve learned that could be helpful if you’re considering paying a heat treater to do flame hardening for you.

The most important consideration involves handling the materials. You have to deal with shipping. Some customers bring parts to us, but many need to arrange shipping. We use a logistics company that can recommend the most reliable, economical carriers for the itineraries that customers need. Customers can use their own carriers or logistics clearinghouses. Right now our services division is still too small for us to provide pickup and delivery with our own truck. Maybe some day, but we’re trying to keep our costs as low as possible for customers today.

The second consideration involves your manufacturing schedule and our project pipelines. We make every effort to turn flame hardening around as quickly as possible because customers need the parts returned as soon as they can. Sometimes however, the demand on our shop delays our desired delivery time of 1-2 weeks. Or, depending on the material a customer sends us, we may need to change out quench solutions – a very labor intensive process. In many cases we may need to add the time for tempering the parts post flame hardening. These considerations suggest that it’s best to contact us before you send a shipment to discuss the specifications and how they may impact delivery schedules. Just send email to mark@flametreatingsystems.com or call us at 919-956-5208 and we will give you an estimate.

The last consideration involves quality. Savvy customers have done the research and development on the material they’re using and the hardness pattern they need on it. If customers get the information to us before even shipping parts to us, that will obviously equip us to do the job as quickly as possible at the standards they require. Sometimes customers send us shipments without prints detailing hardness patterns or requirements. In this case we have to run down that information, causing delays, and often finding that customers themselves aren’t quite sure about the exact specifications they require. While we do enjoy helping customers research and develop their hardness patterns and depth, doing it during a production cycle with parts sitting on the floor is not the best time. Work us into your development cycle and the production cycle will be that much faster and less problem-prone.

In short, we are able to turn around our best work fastest when customers communicate to us ahead of time their part specifications and delivery schedules. So email me at mark@flametreatingsystems.com or call me at 919-956-5208 before you ship to us and we’ll get it worked out. We LOVE our services customers who get their crane wheels, sprockets, and custom parts done here in our shop, especially when they send multiple shipments. The better we get to know your process and parts, the better we can turn around the flame hardening for you. Thanks for visiting our website! Let us know if we can provide any services or flame hardening equipment for you.