Trickymissfit
Well-Known Member
OK guys!
Here we are into the first week of December, and getting heat treat work done is starts to show it's ugly face. They will not heat four or five small parts unless it's an emergency. Steel is not steel! Every alloy number heats treats a little differently. Some of them will involve two and sometimes three different operations to get it all done. Remember your starting out with a case form that has no reamer, and has to either have a reamer ground or a good programmer that knows his stuff. Plus the actual type of steel CH4D uses is important to factor in. They could do the job with something like pretreat 4150 or 4350, and have the end results nitrided for a deep .030" case. Then after heat treat polis it all out to fit. A deep nitride is not a fifteen minute job, and they won't even crack the lid on that furnace without a decent load unless your prepared to pay out the nose. Remember CH4D is a small outfit, and probably sends that work out. Your looking a 30 hours at $20 bucks an hour (or more). This time of the year it takes even more power to heat treat. Then lets say they used a form of low carbon free machine steel. Stuff cuts like butter, but has it's own set of issues! It will shrink in heat treat. Needs an operation to add carbon, and then you can seriously heat treat it. If they used something like A2, they could machine it to size, and then heat treat it. But once again they're not gonna open that furnace up for one set of dies.
Reloading dies and the winter months are just one segment in getting metal hardened. Ball bearing folks will usually slow way down this time of the year. But something like a Timken bearing just keeps rolling along because they use 52*** series steels that are induction hardened. That process takes about fifteen seconds at about $250 an hour. (huge power supplies are needed)
If you ordered your dies after the 15th of October, you also fell into this trap. A good outfit with a good CNC lathe and operators could have built your dies in about four hours (assuming they have blanks), but getting them hardened is another story. Yet somebody like Lee or one of the other big players would have got your dies out a lot faster due to volume alone.
I feel for you and your plight, but also know what's involved. I did it for almost 35 years with a large corporation, and still got put on the waiting list all too often.
gary
Here we are into the first week of December, and getting heat treat work done is starts to show it's ugly face. They will not heat four or five small parts unless it's an emergency. Steel is not steel! Every alloy number heats treats a little differently. Some of them will involve two and sometimes three different operations to get it all done. Remember your starting out with a case form that has no reamer, and has to either have a reamer ground or a good programmer that knows his stuff. Plus the actual type of steel CH4D uses is important to factor in. They could do the job with something like pretreat 4150 or 4350, and have the end results nitrided for a deep .030" case. Then after heat treat polis it all out to fit. A deep nitride is not a fifteen minute job, and they won't even crack the lid on that furnace without a decent load unless your prepared to pay out the nose. Remember CH4D is a small outfit, and probably sends that work out. Your looking a 30 hours at $20 bucks an hour (or more). This time of the year it takes even more power to heat treat. Then lets say they used a form of low carbon free machine steel. Stuff cuts like butter, but has it's own set of issues! It will shrink in heat treat. Needs an operation to add carbon, and then you can seriously heat treat it. If they used something like A2, they could machine it to size, and then heat treat it. But once again they're not gonna open that furnace up for one set of dies.
Reloading dies and the winter months are just one segment in getting metal hardened. Ball bearing folks will usually slow way down this time of the year. But something like a Timken bearing just keeps rolling along because they use 52*** series steels that are induction hardened. That process takes about fifteen seconds at about $250 an hour. (huge power supplies are needed)
If you ordered your dies after the 15th of October, you also fell into this trap. A good outfit with a good CNC lathe and operators could have built your dies in about four hours (assuming they have blanks), but getting them hardened is another story. Yet somebody like Lee or one of the other big players would have got your dies out a lot faster due to volume alone.
I feel for you and your plight, but also know what's involved. I did it for almost 35 years with a large corporation, and still got put on the waiting list all too often.
gary
