Heat Treating Business Gains Competitive Edge with Polymer Quenchants

One job that took two weeks due to reworks is now done in two days, the result of Tenaxol polymer quenchant with anti-foaming agent and greater concentration consistency.

TJ and Jacob Dolhun are not easily impressed. Despite their relatively young ages, 40 and 32 respectively, they have both worked in the family’s dual heat treating businesses in the Milwaukee area as far back as they can remember.

Their grandfather, Theodore Dolhun, started Wisconsin Steel Industries, Inc. (WSI) in 1939 and the family has had involvement in heat treating for three generations. Their dad Ted continued the tradition until his recent retirement and both of the “boys” have been active a long time. They began Complete Heat Treating in Milwaukee in 2007 as a separate entity and run it with their mother, Chris Dolhun.

In November 2011 WSI moved its operations to the Complete Heat Treating plant, where both Wisconsin Steel and Complete Heat Treating run commercial heat treating operations that serve regional manufacturers in the mining, construction, wind energy, rail, government contract, medical, off-road and agricultural equipment industries. They also serve companies as far away as Brazil.

Combined, the companies employ approximately 50 people who process materials such as 4140 and 4340 steel in the forms of castings and forgings up to 100,000 lb, as well as fabrications and some aluminum parts.

Never ones to rest on their laurels, however, TJ and Jake have been making significant improvements in their operations, especially on the technology side. They use a proprietary software system to operate their furnaces, they’ve incorporated a number of green initiatives into the business operation and, about a year ago, switched their polymer quenchant supplier to the originator of that chemistry, Tenaxol Technologies, Inc. (Elkhorn, WI).

WSI and Complete Heat Treating run a total of 13 open fire car bottom and feed furnaces with capacities up to one million lb and workspaces up to 52 ft long x 20 ft wide x 16 ft high. Quench tanks at the facilities range up to 40,000 gal.

Typically, hardness and mechanical specs are supplied by the customers and the metallurgists and chemists in the labs at these facilities work to determine the optimum processing conditions. WSI is rated to GE Nuclear standards while Complete Heat Treating earned its ISO 9001:2008 certification.

Many value-adding secondary services are supplied here, including machining, straightening, roto-blasting and saw cutting, as well as metal coating. The quenching operations at Complete were a particular challenge, owing to the large parts processed here, the dwell times in the quench tanks and the recurrent problems of concentration flux and, most notably, foaming and dragout.

As TJ explains, “We were having a lot of problems on one part, a spun metal with thin but substantial surface area and a rimmed edge. The dragout and the excessive foaming were causing us to rework parts to hit the spec. There were shipping delays and we were struggling to hold the concentrations in the tanks for any extended period.”

Jacob adds, “We had been talking to Tenaxol about their anti-foaming products and, despite some cost differences with our previous supplier, we agreed to testing. Although we were not a customer, their team really went the extra mile to give us the best results their lab could suggest.”