One of the company’s key strengths is its ability to develop proprietary processes that address common heat-treating challenges and improve overall product performance.
By Mark Shortt
HIGH POINT, N.C.—American Metal Treating Inc. (AMT) is an ISO9001:2015 certified, family-owned business that provides high-quality metallurgical services to customers in the aerospace, military, nuclear, racing, and firearms industries. The company also provides these services to commercial machining companies throughout the United States.
In business since 1976, AMT is led by a management team headed by Michael W. Ramm, president; and Brant Ramm, vice president. Its management team also includes Quality Manager Jeff Medlin and Plant Manager Doug Sarber. Today, the company employs approximately 20 people, operating within a 50,000-square-foot facility in High Point, North Carolina.
American Metal Treating draws extensively on the hands-on experience and knowledge that comes from its more than 50-year history to provide a full range of commercial heat-treating services. These specialized services encompass high-pressure quench vacuum processing, carburizing, cryogenic processing at −300°F, nitriding, precipitation hardening, and annealing. They also include stress relieving, ferritic nitrocarburizing, and other specialized processes.
“Our customers include tool, die, and mold makers, aerospace manufacturers, firearms producers, nuclear industry suppliers, military contractors, and many others who rely on precision heat treatment to ensure optimal performance and durability of their components,” Medlin said in an emailed response to Design-2-Part.
Although AMT’s capabilities and quality management system are well documented, Medlin said the company’s greatest strength is its customer-first mindset. In addition to offering a broad range of heat-treating services, AMT strives to differentiate itself through exceptional customer service and technical collaboration. That includes providing customers with expert guidance on metallurgical processes that help improve product performance, durability, and overall quality.
“We work closely with our customers to provide knowledge and guidance on heat-treatment processes, helping them achieve products that are both efficient and of the highest quality,” he said. “We give them that extra technical support that they need, give them suggestions that would benefit them, and give them a better part. We think that sets us apart from most heat treaters.”
A customer, for example, may be curious if they can save money or improve their product by changing a material or process. To answer that question, AMT’s team tries to learn as much as possible about what the customer is trying to accomplish. It helps to know more about their product, the end use, and what the customer wants to achieve by heat treating.
Medlin said the answers to those questions, as well as the engineering information that AMT receives from its customer, enables AMT to guide them in the best direction to help improve their product. “We take pride in doing that,” he said in an interview with D2P.
In one case, a customer approached AMT with a heat-treating challenge involving camshafts that were experiencing distortion during the treatment process. The camshafts were warping during the quenching phase of heat treatment, creating dimensional issues that affected their performance and usability.
Medlin said AMT collaborated closely with the customer’s design engineers to develop and implement an improved, proprietary quenching process that eliminated distortion during heat treatment. This allowed the customer to maintain the required tolerances and achieve consistent part performance.
The case is an example of one of AMT’s key strengths—its development of proprietary processes that address common heat-treating challenges and improve overall product performance.
“We continually refine and update our processes and procedures to maximize quality, efficiency, and productivity, ensuring we remain at the forefront of metallurgical service practices,” Medlin said. “Our furnaces are maintained within tight temperature tolerances, enabling us to deliver consistent, high-quality results that meet the demanding requirements of our customers.”
The company is currently implementing a comprehensive upgrade of its furnace control systems to elevate process efficiency and strengthen the consistency and reliability of its heat-treating operations. Several machines have already received enhanced controls, and additional upgrades are scheduled throughout the year.
Medlin said the investments reflect AMT’s core belief that improving its equipment is ultimately an investment in the quality and performance of its customers’ products.
“We’ve upgraded our IQ furnace control systems, and we’re in the process of upgrading some of the tempering furnace control systems, as well as the vacuum furnace control systems,” he said. “It puts us with more modern equipment, and we’re able to do some things more easily than we had been able to do before. It just brings us to the forefront as far as controls go.”
American Metal Treating’s ability to maintain tight controls on its furnaces is a valuable asset for aerospace work. Customers from the aerospace industry emphasize furnace control more than customers from other industries, Medlin said.
“They just want to know that you’ve got repeatability, that if you do a job today, you can do that same job and produce the same results six months from now. They like to know that you can provide that to them.”