Anyone cryosoaked before?

[warbird]

How do you pick a cryo treater?

 

Good question.

 

Obviously my company is just what you are looking for. (SORRY! )

 

 

There is a whole range of cryo treaters out there just as there is a whole range of heat treaters. Some are good, some are ok, some are horrible. By the way, most heat treaters think cryo treating is either cooling a part down to –140 F or dipping it in liquid nitrogen. I saw the results of dipping a crankshaft in liquid nitrogen. It made a real mess of the engine on the dyno.

1. Make sure that the company knows what cryo processing is. It is not –140 F cold treating, it is not dipping a part into liquid nitrogen. It is the slow cooling of the part, followed by holding it at the low temperature for a specified time, (usually 8 to 40 hours) followed by a slow heat up back to room temperature. It may or may not be followed by a tempering cycle.
   
2. Look for affiliations with known entities like the Cryogenic Society of America which covers all things cryogenic, ASM which is the metallurgists and material scientists professional society.
   
3. Look for experience. A lot of people will buy a machine and then proclaim themselves experts.
   
4. A company with metallurgists or engineers on staff is a plus.
   
5. A company that encourages research into cryo processing is a plus.
   
6. Trade journal articles written by a company are ok, but research papers for serious journals are better.
   
7. A company with a racing expert on staff is a plus for your potential uses.
   
8. If their literature proclaims that they do something to the "molecular structure" of metals be highly suspicious that they do not know what they are talking about. Metals are crystalline in structure.
   
9. Avoid cryo treaters who make wild claims.
   
10. Look for treaters who process for well known racing equipment manufacturers.
    
11. Look at their equipment. The best equipment are circular vacuum insulated machines that use heat exchangers to cool the load. (Sorry, that is what we sell, and I couldn’t resist.) Any machine that allows liquid nitrogen to hit your part is highly suspect. Machines with spray bars that spray liquid nitrogen into the chamber to cool the part are in my opinion suspect, as we have tested against such machines and found ours have better results. The makers of such machines say the liquid nitrogen evaporates before it hits your part. The question becomes "does the light go out when you close your refrigerator door? That being said, careful use of such machines can produce ok results.
    
12. Companies that call the process cryogenic tempering do not understand what tempering is.
    

Sorry if I got a bit wordy, but if you decide to trust your hard earned money to someone, you should be sure that they will give you top value for it.

[Mayolives]

Warbird,

You seam to know what you are talking about and I thank you for contributing to HybridZ. We are always open to informative members who are knowledgeable. Please don't be shy about the service you offer. Please tell us more about your company, where its located, what the average cost to treat a brake rotor would be and what the estimated turn around time would be. Most of us are one man bands who would probably only be having one set of rotors done at a time but I'm sure there will be the occasional need for more extensive engine parts work.