High-pressure Manufacturing

Heavy turning, milling, and drilling are combined in several parts at Henry Technologies.

With many installations throughout the world, Henry Technologies, Brantford, Ont., is a fairly typical Canadian exporter.

Formerly known as Chil-Con, the company has been manufacturing in Canada since 1967. Like many companies with long histories, Henry Technologies has had to adapt to changing business conditions, and since the ’60s, it has changed from being a manufacturer solely of chillers and condensers for the industrial refrigeration market to also being a fabricator of pressure vessels and heat exchangers.

The company serves markets that include oil and gas, petrochemical, and industrial refrigeration. To do so, it relies heavily on in-house design and engineering, state-of-the-art equipment, and qualified labor to compete on a global scale.

“Over the course of the past five or so years, we have brought in new equipment that will allow us to create nearly every part that we need for our products,” explained Sales and Marketing Manager Michael Walsh. “Not only has this movement away from outsourcing allowed us to have better control over our delivery times, it has also helped control costs.”

For most of the company’s machining work, Okuma vertical machining centers, horizontal machining centers, and turning centers are sufficient. However, when the work gets too big for this equipment, for example in the creation of tube sheets exceeding the Okuma’s 30-in. machining capacity, a Quickmill system is used.

The company’s facility is also equipped with two six-axis, chuck-driven layout and cut machines; a Davi four-roll plate roll; and multiple welding stations capable of gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW), shielded metal arc welding (SMAW), submerged arc welding (SAW), gas metal arc welding (GMAW), and flux-cored arc welding (FCAW).

The manufacturing plant is large enough to create units up to 12 ft. in diameter and 80 ft. in length.

Due to the possible harmful results created by an unstable pressure vessel, quality control, testing, and adherence to proper welding procedures are important parts of the manufacturing process at Henry Technologies.

“Our quality systems and procedures are certified to ISO 9001:2008, and we also hold approvals for ASME, Pressure Equipment Directive, CE, and other international standards,” said Walsh.

Design Stage

Before any metal is machined, plate is rolled, or joints are welded, the company’s designers have already created the final product virtually. With very little duplication from project to project, this design stage is a critical step prior to the manufacturing stage that also guarantees that each product will be up to code.

Rolled parts are a large part of the company's fabrication work. It even rings outside rolling work into the shop when capacity allows.

The company designs to ASME Section VIII as well as international design codes using a variety of software platforms, including ANSYS, HTFS, HTRI, and COADE PV Elite, augmented with its own in-house mechanical design program to generate specific code calculations and meet a customer’s specifications. The latest versions of AutoCAD® and SolidWorks® 3D are used to generate approval and fabrication drawings.

“Our engineering department ensures that our manufacturing meets the code requirements prior to build,” said Walsh. “This means that time isn’t wasted farther down the manufacturing stream and that all final approvals are made before we start a build.”

On the Henry Technologies manufacturing floor parts are fabricated from carbon steel, stainless steel, duplex stainless steel, INCOLOY® and INCONEL® alloys, NiCrMo steel, and titanium, each of which has its own unique set of machining, rolling, and welding challenges.

Machining Processes

“Drilling is the machining process that we do the most, and we are always looking at new technology in this area,” said Machine Shop Supervisor Cory Hampson. “Most of this work is now kept in-house thanks to the new equipment, and we only outsource when a part is too big for our machines.”

The company is able to turn diameters of 26 in. and mill parts up to 60 by 26 in. As parts get larger, the Quickmill system is used thanks to its 96- by 180- by 15-in. work envelope.

“We use through-tool, high-pressure coolant during our drilling process for proper chip evacuation, and through-tool air blasts are used in the milling process,” said Hampson.

In the company’s machine shop, reducing setup time is key.

“Getting our parts on and off the machines quickly reduces the cost of machining and that helps keep us competitive,” said Walsh. “By combining the equipment that we have in the machine shop with what we have on the fabricating side of the shop, there are very few parts that we can’t create now.”

Fabrication Processes

Two unique processes in the fabricating shop enable the creation of the large plate components of the company’s product line.

“We have a couple of pieces of equipment that allow us to eliminate bottlenecks, and it is equipment that our competitors don’t have,” said Walsh.

The plasma cutters remain busy cutting holes, profiles and even bevels in the large-diameter tube.

A four-roll Davi plate rolling machine capable of rolling a 2-in. sheet to diameters up to 60 in. is one of the shop’s workhorses.

“We used to outsource this work, and now with the Davi, we actually bring outside rolling work in,” said Walsh.

A multiaxis plasma cutter is used to process large-diameter tubes.

“This really is a unique piece of equipment,” said Walsh. “With this machine we can have an entire tube processed in the time it takes our competitors to set up their job.”

The nature of the multiaxis cutter means that large-diameter tubes can be processed quickly and accurately in one setup. Holes, bevels, and profiles all can be cut with little or no operator interaction.

Quality Labor

“Our workers are a definite strength of the company too,” said Walsh. “Our welders, for example, have experience ranging from five to 30 years, and are all competent in multiple types of welding. It’s hard to get new welders these days, so we have tried to become really good at retaining staff.”

Part of this retention process includes proper health and safety techniques, and training is an important part of the business.

“We strive to put employees in a place where they can be successful and safe at what they do,” explained Human Resource Manager Ross Hainer. “We know that we are going to have health and safety problems if we don’t listen to the workers and put them in a position to succeed. We can’t just pull people in from the street to come in and work here, so we want to keep our workers safe and at work.”

The final step in the manufacturing process at Henry Technologies involves the testing, under pressure, of the final end product. Because of the nature of the products that it produces, the company makes use of a concrete bunker test facility.

Following manufacturing the pressure vessels are sealed, brought up to pressure, and witnessed via a camera system installed in the bunker. Air or nitrogen is generally used to ensure that no contamination enters into the vessel.

For more information, visit www.henrytech.ca.