“Dhatukarm is master in installing complete heat treatment plant with the world`s leading best technologies at lowest operational cost,” Mukesh Jain, Founder and Chairperson of Dhatukarm

Mr. Mukesh Jain, Founder and Chairperson of Dhatukarm, is a first class Metallurgical Engineer from I.I.T Roorkee, India, from 1984 Batch.

Mr. Jain started his career as a Heat Treatment Plant Engineer in an aluminium extrusion plant and served his ideas on improving the Heat Treatment process along with hot top aluminium billet casting technology.

Later in 1989, Mr. Jain started his own business of manufacturing heat treatment salts and aluminium foundry chemicals from the Capital Delhi. Since then Mr. Jain kept his focus on improving the casting technologies and heat treatment process in aluminium extrusion plants and today heading 4 companies in India.

AL Circle: You are a leading name in manufacturing foundry fluxes and heat-treatment salts. Please tell us the applications of heat-treatment salts in the aluminium industry. What are the advantages of salt bath heat treatment?

Mukesh Jain: Dhatukarm is a renowned name in the Heat Treatment Industries as a supplier and manufacturer of all kinds of Heat Treatment salts i.e Hardening, Carburizing Tempering Salts and Liquid Nitriding Salts/Ammonia Gas Nitriding Plants for Aluminium Extrusion/Die Casting Dies.

Heat Treatment plays a major role not only in the aluminium industry but in all the manufacturing sectors. The heat treatment process ensures long life of the tools and dies and assembly parts of the machines. If we have provided good quality heat treatment process over the parts, then it ensures the long life of the parts and machines.

The Salt Bath Heat treatment process is usually used as a medium in Carburizing, Hardening, Annealing, Preheating, Tempering, Martempering, Austempering etc. Molten salt baths of various composition are available to cover the temperature range of 150-1350`c. Since the work is surrounded by salt, heating is uniform, distortion is less, and part can be machined before heat treatment. Treated parts have a clean, bright, scale-free finish, and decarburization can be completely eliminated.

AL Circle: How is heat-treatment applied in the aluminium extrusion process?

Mukesh Jain: Since the success of an aluminium extrusion plant is dependent on its extrusion dies, the precision of aluminium extrusion die is most important to get the desired section profile with clean, bright, scale-free finishing.

When we consider the manufacturing process of an aluminium extrusion die after CNC and all machining, the next major step comes out is of heat treatment to create hardness in the dies so that it can bear the high pressure over the extrusion press.

The Heat Treatment process is responsible to develop internal hardness in the dies and tools. Without proper heat treatment, the dies will deform, crack and will not give the desired results.

Dhatukarm is master in installing complete heat treatment plant with the world`s leading best technologies at lowest operational cost under the guidance and supervision of its founder and IIT Roorkee Metallurgical Engineer having 35 Years of experience in the field.

AL Circle: Please brief us on the different heat treatment processes used in aluminium plants. Which is the most scientific process among them all?

Mukesh Jain: After Machining of new extrusion dies and other parts, the heat treatment process involves hardening, tempering and quenching at various ranges of temperatures.

After the heat treatment process when the dies and tools achieve their desired internal hardness, next step is to undergo nitriding process.

Liquid Nitriding Salt Bath process (Equivalent to Tuff Triding and Sursulf) creates a hard diffusion layer over the top surface of dies and tools, also known as compound layer, with a thickness of up to 15-20 micron with 72 HRC hardness.

Another Nitriding process if Ammonia Gas Nitriding Process that creates the compound layer of upto 0.1 mm over the top layer. The result of Ammonia Gas Nitriding is much more better than Liquid Nitriding. Dhatukarm is master in installing Ammonia Gas Nitriding Plant.

Nitriding improves the surface properties like wear resistance (400-1000%), corrosion resistance, anti-scuffing and anti-galling properties and fatigue strength (60-100%) of the extrusion dies made from H13 and H11 hot die steel.

AL Circle: What are the unique features of Dhatukarm Ammonia Gas Nitriding? Why is Ammonia Gas Nitriding important in the Aluminium extrusion Dies?

Mukesh Jain: Dhatukarm is master in developing & installing Ammonia Gas Nitriding Plant (Make in India) for aluminium extrusion dies. We are specialist in manufacturing Gas Nitriding plant with Zero Leakage of Ammonia Gas which can be operated by a layman of Plant.

The Ammonia Gas Nitriding plant installed by Dhatukarm is highly cost effective and the surface hardness results achieved are much more better as compared to Liquid Nitriding process as Ammonia Gas Nitriding process creates a diffusion layer of upto 0.1 mm.

Gas Nitriding is a surface hardening process, where nitrogen is added to the surface of aluminiun extrusion dies using dissociated ammonia as the source. Gas Nitriding develops a very hard case in extrusion dies at relatively low temperature.

Dhatukarm`s Gas Nitriding process is easy to use and highly economical as large number of extrusion dies can be processed at once. The extrusion dies after Ammonia Gas Nitriding process can extrude up to 4-5 tonnes of material at once in comparison with 1-2 tonnes from Liquid Nitriding process.

AL Circle: Describe a time when you need to perform the heat treatment process again over the extrusion dies to resolve an issue with a die.

Mukesh Jain: As all extrusion dies should be of a H11, H13 grade steel, this steel should not be treated for more than 3 Hrs over the temperature range of 560-580`c. But sometimes during the Nitriding Process, if by mistake, these dies crosses the 3 Hrs cycle time, then dies gets anneal and losses its internal hardness. To avoid the deformation of Dies over the extrusion press, these dies need to undergo heat treatment process again to achieve their internal hardness.

AL Circle: What sustainability measures have you adopted in your operation? How do you manage and dispose of heat treatment salts to ensure environmental compliance?

Mukesh Jain: Dhatukarm believes in quality works. The aim of Dhatukarm is to provide high quality raw materials without any compromise. The pillar of quality is the main foundation of company since 1989.

As all heat treatment salts are chloride based salts and contain hazardous barium in it, to ensure the environmental compliances, dhatukarm is capable to neutralise the salt sludge from the heat treatment plants so that it couldn`t harm the environment. After neutralization of the hazardous salts the company provides a certificate of neutralization to the beneficiary unit.

AL Circle: Do you offer technical service to your customers? What are the special features of your technical service?

Mukesh Jain: Dhatukarm is always available for its business partners (clients) who are equally contributing for the growth of a company. The company provides technical solutions to maintain the continuity of business operation and helps in achieving the desired level of requirement in terms of heat treatment and making of an alloy for aluminium industries.