Bob Krysiak, Vice President and Manager, Rolled Ring Products, and Vince Miller, Corporate Heat Treat Manager, answer questions concerning this remarkable forging company's continuing expansion, including its new 50,000-gallon cylindrical quench tank containing Ucon® HT polymer quenchant from Tenaxol, Inc.

Gentlemen, your new heat treating facility here in Spring Grove is an eye-opener. Is there anything like it elsewhere to your knowledge?

Krysiak: Not that we know of. There could be, of course. We don't know if it's the largest of its type, but we do know that it's unique and built by our own people.

Give us a broad description of it, just to provide some parameters.

Miller: Well, to begin with, the basic operating units are positioned in a rectangular concrete pit that is 100 feet long, 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep. Ultimately, the pit will contain a quench tank at one end and four circular furnaces, all serviced by a railmounted overhead crane. The quench tank will service all four furnaces. Ancillary facilities include two 20,000 gallon and one 10,000-gallon holding tanks to permit rapid emptying and refilling of the quench tank as needed. Then, there will be two liquid-to-air heat exchangers outside the building for quenchant temperature control.

You mentioned your own requirements. Would you elaborate?

Krysiak: This facility is designed to accommodate production of rolled rings, especially of very large size. We operate two ring mills here that can produce parts ranging from just a few pounds on up. Our automated Wagner rings up to 20 feet outer diameter, 49 inches in face height and weighing up to 60,000 pounds per piece. It's an integral part of our program to be a major factor in production of rolled rings. Last year, we formed a new company named Ringmasters, resulting from joint purchase of of the former Ovako Ajax plant in Wayne, Michigan, by Scot Forge and our partner FRISA of Monterrey, Mexico. Ringmasters sales, marketing and administration are provided here in Spring Grove.

What's some of the detail concerning the heat treat operation?

Miller: The quench tank has a working diameter of 22 feet and is 16 feet deep. Its nominal charge is 50,000 gallons of Tenaxol's Ucon HT formulation quenchant, and accommodates loads up to 60,000 pounds. Agitation is provided by six duct tubes, each 32 inches in diameter and individually equipped with propeller drives, all located in the bottom of the tank. Quenchant is driven to the center, then upward, outward, and back down the side of the tank and into the duct tubes once again. Obviously, we're going to circulate a lot of quenchant.

What about the furnaces?

Miller: The first is the largest. It handles loads up to 20 feet in diameter which matches the maximum size of the rings produced by the Wagner ring mill. Two others have working diameters of 17 feet and the fourth one will take rings up to 12 feet in diameter.

Why those particular dimensions?

Krysiak: They resulted from a significant amount of numbers crunching based on our own experience, a good deal of industry data, and some value judgments concerning the evolution of demand for rolled ring products. Installation of these units will be timestepped, however, so that we can incorporate our experience as we gain it.

How will you handle the furnace lids? These are sizable components.

Miller: The covers will be vertically hinged at one point on the furnace circumference. They will be hydraulically raised a few inches and then a gear mechanism will rotate them off to one side. The hinge pin, if you will, on the big furnace, has a 28-inch diameter.

Anything exotic in terms of materials handling, that sort of thing?

Miller: These furnaces are fiber insulated and heated with open flame burners. Materials handling on the ring furnaces will be accomplished with a specially designed, solid masted overhead crane with articulating arms to move hot rings with minimal distortion.

You have other quench facilities, right? How do they differ from what you've built here, and are there any differences in the quenchants?

Miller: Yes we do. On the other side of the plant here in Spring Grove is the first quench tank we installed, and then about a year and a half ago we started up quenching operations for the first time in our Clinton, Wisconsin plant. They are both rectangular pits with built-in elevators. The quenchant is the same in both tanks, Tenaxol's HT polyalkylene glycol. Matter of fact, it's the only quenchant we've used.

What's the story there? How did that come about?

Krysiak: Well, I don't know if you noticed, but this is probably the cleanest forging operation you are ever likely to see. Same holds for our other plants. When we decided--I think it was right around 1980--to do our own heat treating, cleanliness of operation was a significant factor. The most significant factor by far, however, was safety, and in this light we wanted nothing to do with oil. These are large surface area, open tanks, and we simply did not want the threat of oil's everpresent potential for disastrous fires hanging over our heads. Our economic analysis also took into account the extensive capital expenditures required for fire protection and pollution control. In that sense, the decision to use polymer quenchants was a no-brainer.

So the next challenge was picking the best polymer quenchant and which supplier to provide it? How did you go about this?

Krysiak: We were just getting started, so we simply called in the names we knew about and listened to their product and service presentations. We assessed not only the various products, but the people as well, and Tenaxol was head and shoulders above the rest.

And you've been doing business with Tenaxol ever since?

Miller: That's right. What becomes apparent in fairly short order is that Tenaxol people are feet-on-the-floor heat treaters. They know their quenchants inside and out, but more than that they know the quenching process and the metallurgy of quenching. Whenever we have a problem, and we do have them--with the huge variety of shapes, sizes and materials we use, they're inescapable--Tenaxol people are here when you want them. We found them to be extraordinarily knowledgeable about equipment design, process parameters and control, quenchant management, materials composition, and, occasionally, design of some of the parts we forge.

It's OK to quote you on all that?

Miller: Absolutely. If it weren't true, we wouldn't say it. At the same time, at Scot Forge, we never take our customer for granted, and we expect the same attitude from our vendors. As a matter of fact, we periodically do status checks, just to make sure. We are not locked in.

Thus far we haven't asked any questions about Scot Forge, the company. Give us a little insight.

Krysiak: Feel free to stop me at any time. This company is more than 100 years old and we classify ourselves as a custom open die forge shop. I'm positive we're the fastest growing at this point in time, and that doesn't include acquisitions. Scot Forge is owned by its employees within an ESOP program and, at the present time we have about 450 people overall.

How many are in heat treating?

Miller: We have 20 here in Spring Grove and 12 at the Clinton plant.

Didn't mean to interrupt. Please continue.

Krysiak: No problem. Our main plant and headquarters are here in Spring Grove with major operations in Clinton, Wisconsin, a partner, FRISA, in Monterrey, Mexico, the Ringmasters plant in Wayne, Michigan, and a plant in Franklin Park, Illinois. This plant was a consolidation of our Cicero hammer plant and the Hellstrom Corp., which we acquired in 1990. We forge any metal that's forgeable, all ferrous metals, copper base alloys, aluminum, titanium, etc., operate a metallurgical laboratory that's extraordinarily complete, offer associated services such as cutting and machining, and operate our own fleet of trucks. Oh, yes. We were the first open die forge shop to be certified to ISO 9002, and I think we're approaching 200,000,000 pounds in annual forged output.

That's a lot of material. How much of it is heat treated?

Miller: This is an estimate, but it's very close to two-thirds.

You said earlier that heat treat started here around 1980, then recently you began heat treating at the Clinton plant, and now you're making a really big expansion of heat treating here.

Miller: We also plan on installing quench and temper operations in the Franklin Park plant.

How is it that you went almost 90 years without in-house heat treat and now it would appear to be an integral part of operations?

Krysiak: Ah, good question. Truth be told, if polymer quenchants hadn't come along, I'm not sure we wouldn't still be without. Our aversion to the mess, smoke and danger of oil quenching was very deep rooted, even though trucking costs, delays and lack of control were expensive. As we became comfortable with polymer quenching as a process, and saw how it enhanced what we could offer our customers, heat treating has become a standard part of our production capability. I should add that Tenaxol is considered a real member of our heat treating team.

How do you use them?

Miller: As a matter of quality control routine, we send them bath samples on a periodic basis for analysis, and then they also do cooling curve construction and analysis for us as well. Primarily, however, we use them for their knowledge and experience, typically with part configuration, bath temperature as for certain alloys, agitation and so forth. In general, they provide a sounding board and information resource.

Are these services part of a separate package, so to speak?

Miller: No. They come with the product. They're part of its quality.

A View of the 24' diameter quench tank at 
Scot Forge's Spring Grove, IL facility.