Since its inception in 1958, heat treatment specialist P.H. Heat Treatment has been carrying out various heat treatment processes for the automotive industry. These processes are an essential part of manufacturing and ensure increased mechanical properties such as tensile strength, wear resistance and corrosion resistance. Some or all of these properties are essential in making certain components fit for use.

From the installation of its first controlled atmosphere sealed quench furnace in 1981, the company has been able to carry out high-quality heat treatment processes such as neutral hardening; atmosphere normalising; carbon restoration; various case hardening treatments, such as carburising, carbonitriding and a range of austenitic nitrocarburising treatments; and annealing and tempering; as well as subzero treatment.

The company has grown and now boasts 35 furnaces, some of which are electrically heated and others gas-fired using pipeline natural gas. Most of the above treatments require processing at high temperatures of up to 950 °C for extended periods and often require oil quenching and tempering thereafter.

These treatments have been and still are applied to a vast range of automotive components, such as clutch plates, gears and pinions, steering components, brake components and gudgeon pins, as well as damper arms.

In 2004, P.H. Heat Treatment obtained an exclusive licence from Canada-based heat treating and manufacturing services company Nitrex for the controlled nitriding and ferritic nitrocarburising processes registered as the Nitreg® range. The difference between these processes and conventional gas nitriding is the ability to control the nitride (white) layer hardness and thickness, overall case depth and hardness, resulting in excellent quality and repeatability.

These processes all require low temperatures between 450 °C and 600 °C, compared with conventional nitriding. The Nitreg® processes result in hard-wearing and corrosion resisting surfaces.

With all these processes, combined with high-quality furnaces, instrumentation and gas atmosphere systems, P.H. Heat Treatment, offers excellent heat treatment of automotive components. Therefore manufacturers who wish to extend or initiate manufacture of high technology components currently not made in this country can rely on P.H. Heat Treatment to support them with its heat treatment expertise.