Bluewater Thermal Solutions' hardening process enlists a wide variety of metal heat treatment solutions designed to increase the hardness, strength, and fatigue life of metal parts and components.

Carburizing heat treatment is a case hardening process in which a metal part or component of low carbon content is heated in a carbon-rich gas atmosphere. The process of heating the metal component in a high carbon environment allows for diffusion of carbon atoms directly into the surface of the part that needs to be case hardened.

The functions of normalizing may overlap with or easily be confused with those of annealing, hardening, and stress relieving; however, they are not interchangeable, and the final use of the product must be considered when determining which method to use. This process may increase or decrease the strength and hardness of metal in a given product form, depending on the thermal and mechanical history of the product.

Our induction hardening service is a form of heat treatment Bluewater utilizes to selectively harden a metal part or component via localized heating where only some surfaces of a metal part are heated while the remainder of the part stays cold during processing. The localized heating is accomplished using a solid state electric power supply that sends an electrical current through an inductor coil that is wrapped around the surfaces of the part to be heated. 

Bluewater Thermal Solutions' furnace brazing services include assembly and furnace brazing aluminum of engineered components, variety of different types of metals including nickel alloys, carbon, and alloy steels as well as stainless steel, aluminum, copper an even titanium. Our facilities specialize in high-volume automotive component brazing using continuous mesh belt furnaces. Atmospheres available include disassociated ammonia, exothermic, hydrogen, and vacuum. Copper, nickel, nicro, and silver brazing are utilized with either paste or wire pre-forms.

Bluewater has the capability to perform bright annealing of stainless steel in continuous belt furnaces. Continuous furnaces allow for a constant stream of parts to pass through an annealing furnace and are the most economical way to process high volumes of components. It also has the advantage of having parts being placed in thin layers on a mesh belt instead of batch processing where large masses of bulk material are treated at once. The thin layered parts will heat and cool more uniformly, producing consistent results from part to part throughout the load. The thin layers of parts also are less prone to distortion than bulk loading techniques normally used in vacuum.