Cincinnati Steel Treating (CST) is an ISO certified outsourcing partner who helps manufacturing engineers and part designers strengthen gears and components with premiere heat treating applications. Our processes add durability and longevity to the life of your parts.
Serving domestic and global customers for over 80 years in the large gears, automotive, machine tool, bearing, heavy equipment, mining, tool and die, industrial knife, foundry, and steel fabrication industries.
Industries
Power Transmissions
Cincinnati Steel Treating (CST) performs multiple types of heat treatments on all of the various components that are used in the Power Transmission Industry. We are the expert at figuring out how to heat treat your Power Transmission component parts.
Automotive
Cincinnati Steel Treating (CST) has at least seventy years of experience heat treating automotive parts. We are certified to IATF 16949 and ISO 14001, and we are knowledgeable in the PPAP process along with having long-standing relationships with automotive suppliers.
Manufacturing
Cincinnati Steel Treating (CST) has worked with almost every type of manufacturer that exists in the marketplace. We have heat treated parts for food processors, automotive suppliers, military contractors, and even musical instrument builders. Allow us to help you with your heat treatment needs.
Heat Treating Services
Aluminum Processing
Cincinnati Steel Treating (CST) performs solution treating, aging, stress relieving, and annealing of cast and wrought aluminum products.
Annealing
Annealing is used to soften or alter the grain structure for improved formability and machinability.
Blast Cleaning
Whether your parts require glass bead blasting or steel shot blast cleaning, Cincinnati Steel Treating accommodates many different parts, including forged and fragile items.
Carbonitriding
Similar to carburizing, Carbonitriding introduces ammonia as well as carbon into the furnace atmosphere for hardening steel.
Carburizing
Cincinnati Steel Treating has an extremely broad range of furnaces for both job shop and production gas carburizing, including nitrocarburizing and carbonitriding.
Ferritic Nitrocarburizing
Ferritic Nitrocarburizing [FNC] is a case hardening process similar to gas nitriding that is used to produce a hard, wear-resistant surface on low grades of steel such as 1010, 1018, 1020, A-36, etc. and most cast irons.
Flame Hardening
Cincinnati Steel Treating has a vast array of knowledge and experience with flame hardening. Consult with our flame hardening experts to determine the best solution for your application.
Gas Nitriding
For gas nitriding, our Ohio facility is well located for Midwest manufacturers, offering one of the largest nitriding departments in the country.
Hardening
Cincinnati Steel Treating offers a variety of hardening options. From tool steels to forgings, CST is your hardening headquarters.
High Temp Alloy Age Hardening
Cincinnati Steel Treating has experience with performing age hardening on a wide variety high temperature alloys including Inconel 718, 17-4 PH, and ASTM A297 HU Material.
Induction Hardening
Cincinnati Steel Treating has two induction hardening machines capable of heat treating small powder metallurgy gears, shafts, spindles, and brackets. CST can assist you in designing the right tooling for your application.
Long Part Applications
Our atmosphere pit furnaces enable us to vertically process long slender parts such as knives, shear blades, machine ways, and shafts, thus minimizing distortion and reducing the straightening required.
Metallurgical Expertise
CST has a staff of experienced professionals, including a degreed metallurgist, that can help answer questions that you may have about material selection, heat treating processes and metallurgical properties of materials.
Normalizing
Normalizing is used to improve the machinability, grain structure and mechanical properties in a wide variety of parts.
Press Quenching
Cincinnati Steel Treating has a Gleason Press Quench capable of press quenching gears 26” in diameter and less. Press quenching is a very effective method of harden and tempering a ring gear with a minimum of distortion.
Stainless Steel Processing
Cincinnati Steel Treating is a leader in stainless steel processing for the Midwest and beyond. This includes both 300 series (austenitic) and 400 series (martensitic) stainless steels.
Straightening
Cincinnati Steel Treating has two presses capable of straightening both flat and round long parts to tolerances as low as 0.010” TIR. Our expertise in straightening is unmatched in the heat treating industry.
Stress Relieving
Cincinnati Steel Treating performs commercial stress relief operations on a wide variety of parts of different sizes, shapes, and conditions.
Sub-Zero Metal Treating
Cincinnati Steel Treating performs cold treatments and cryogenic treatments on parts on both a commercial basis and as part of an overall heat treatment process such as quench and temper.
Tool Steel Processing
Cincinnati Steel Treating routinely performs hardening and precision straightening operations on tool steel shear blades and knives. Consult one of our experts for determining the best way to heat treat your tool steel part.
What Our Clients Say About Us
'The Quality Group at CST is very responsive and always willing to accommodate request to give the necessary information for our customers.'
Garrett Ford
Cincinnati Gearing Systems
'Midstate Machine has been doing business with Cincinnati Steel Treating Company for several years. The professionalism and attention to detail exhibited by Cincinnati Steel is of the highest caliber! We rely heavily on our outside vendors to expedite time sensitive materials and they are always happy to accommodate us. The pricing is fair, and our Certifications are always delivered on time. Cincinnati Steel Treating Company is overall a fantastic company to do business with!.'
Lindsey Barrett
McSwain Mfg. - Midstate Machine
'Cincinnati Steel Treating has been a preferred supplier to Ariel for many years. They are able to meet our production needs at a high quality level. We look forward to continuing this partnership well into the future. Thanks for being someone we can count on.'
Kevin Spencer
Ariel Corporation
Top Questions Our Clients Ask
We have equipment that is capable of quench-and-tempering, carburizing, nitriding, ferritic nitrocarburizing (FNC), carbo-nitriding, induction hardening, stress relieving, normalizing (atmosphere and open air), and annealing. The specific dimensions that we can heat treat and the temperatures and atmospheres that we can produce are all listed in the heat treating processes.
Yes. Consult with any one of our metallurgists to provide a material and process solution for your heat treating needs.
The tolerances that we can straighten to depend upon the material the part is made out of, the geometry and shape of the part, and how the part is heat treated. We can hold tolerances of +/- 0.010” TIR on long rounds, and we can hold tolerances of +/- 0.020” on an edge for long flat parts. Plates can usually be held to within +/- 0.020” flatness, but that tolerance may have to be increased depending on the size and geometry of the plate.
Nitriding involves heating a part in a nitrogenous atmosphere, so that nascent nitrogen can dissolve into the surface of a part. The nitrogen also reacts with the iron to form iron nitrides to create what is known as the “white layer” or compound layer. The dissolved nitrogen increases the hardness in the surface, and the nitrogen also reacts with alloying elements in the steel to form alloy nitrides that further increases the hardness. The benefits of the increased surface hardness can be added to the fact that the white layer or compound layer provides a layer of corrosion protection. All of the work is done below the Ac3 temperature, so distortion is kept to a minimum. Nitriding is typically limited to medium carbon, alloy steels like 4140, 4340, 8620, etc. Plain carbon steels such as 1010, 1018, 1045, 1215, etc. cannot be nitrided. For clarification, consult with one of our experts.
Ferritic nitrocarburizing or FNC does all of the same things as nitriding, but carbon is added in addition to the nitrogen. The addition of carbon increases the hardness of the surface layer above that of nitriding, so that a more hard and wear resistant case is obtained for the same amount of processing time. The FNC process also produces a white layer or compound layer that provides all of the same corrosion resistant benefits. The same limitations as to grades of steel apply to FNC as to nitriding.
We can process parts very quickly at our facility. The amount of turnaround time will depend on the required processing steps. Large loads of extended carburizing or nitriding cycles could take up to a month to process, but simple stress relief loads can be turned around in two to three days. Our turnaround times will be clearly communicated during the quoting stage of a job, and we will meet the turnaround times that we send out.
Bring Us Your Heat Treating Challenges
For over 80 years, we’ve helped our clients across many industries improve production time and parts performance, quickly and efficiently. Turnaround times are fast and quality control is precise. As your outsourcing partner, we provide solutions to take your results to the next level.