High Performance Heat Treating Inc.

High Performance Heat Treating was incorporated in July of 1993. The building we are now occupying was originally a warehouse. At the time HPHT was started, the building was being used by the city police department as an impound garage and cruiser parking. While they were not happy about losing a spacious garage, the HPD was happy to see new jobs coming to the area, so there were no hard feelings.

The original partners brought together their own unique experiences and talents to create the business. One partner is a mechanical engineer with 12 years experience in the steel industry. While working in the steel industry, he was responsible for maintaining numerous large metal heating furnaces – keeping them running at maximum efficiency with minimal downtime. A second partner had 28 years of experience as a metallurgist for a nickel alloy company. He brought a wide-range of applied metallurgy experience to the company as well as experience doing research and development. The third partner was already the owner of a fastener company and as such had extensive experience with the operation of a small business. Together, the team purchased and installed the equipment necessary to meet the needs of local businesses that required metal heat treatment. Specialized equipment was often engineered and built in-house to meet customer’s needs.

During the early years, HPHT served only a very local customer base with a radius of about 20 miles. After 4 years however, the company was ready to expand and purchased a one-ton flat bed truck in order to increase the customer base. Once HPHT was able to pickup and deliver, the business grew quickly. In 3 years, we had out-grown the one-ton truck. A much larger flatbed truck was purchased and there are still times when that truck has not been large enough. The customer base radius is now over 150 miles. HPHT grew from 40 customers after the first 4 years to over 130 very loyal customers.

The business has grown and evolved over the years. We started out doing primarily neutral hardening of 4140, 1050 and other similar materials. Carburizing gears is now the largest area of our business. We also routinely handle many alloys (e.g: K500 and 718 nickel alloys) that other heat treating companies never see.

We continue to add equipment and capabilities as opportunities arrive. We have produced thousands of welded nickel alloy billet assemblies that a company extruded into boiler tubes for very high sulfur coal applications. We engineered a specialized automated brazing system to attach a carbide tip to a steel holder. This system reduced by two-thirds the manpower required to attach the carbide tip. This allowed us to assemble thousands of high quality parts with minimal labor. Since we are a small company, we are able to address our customer’s needs on a more personal level. We have worked with our customers many times to solve their special problems and help them to be more competitive and profitable. By doing this, we have helped customers make products that they could not produce in the past. This helps us both grow.