People who build things tend to be passionate about the tools they use. Getting a new toy to play with is always fun: you get to enjoy it on its own, and you get to brag a little. It should come as no surprise that the Thermal-Vac team is getting giddy about some new gear coming into the shop.

It’s some pretty heavy-duty stuff, too:

• A new furnace at Thermal Vac Arizona

Our new location in Arizona wouldn’t be complete without a shiny new vacuum furnace. These machines are our bread and butter. (We take our diets seriously, so we char our bread with precision and absolutely vaporize our butter.) Adding to what the crew there can do will give them the added capability our Arizona customers have asked for.

• A new salt bath for the shop in Orange

Ready for a trip to the spa? Our new salt bath will quench your components after a stint in the heat treatment furnace. It can also get your brazed joints flowing again. Basking in molten salt is a great way to reduce stress, harden surfaces, and produce a nice, even temperament. Bring some cold water to drink: temperatures start at around 275°F and can go well over 1000°F. Please leave your bunny slippers at home, though: work boots required.

• Knight Rider makes an appearance at Thermal-Vac

We’ve got new kit on the way (and if you’re David Hasselhoff, you’re on to our joke by now). It’s a Gasbarre nitriding furnace and it’s on the case—case hardening, that is. It won’t have a flashing light in the front and we don’t expect it to talk unless our team has worked too many hours in a row. What it will do is give us a powerful tool for delivering outstanding case hardening services for our customers.

• Power for a zombie apocalypse

For gear heads like us, it’s hard to resist today’s battery technologies. We rely on power for everything we do, which is why we’re getting a new battery system in our Orange facility. We’re not exactly going off the grid, but we’ll be ready if the grid goes off.

Serious upgrades take serious work

In a compliance-driven business like ours, adding new gear isn’t easy. At Thermal-Vac we’ll sometimes take a year or longer to perfect our craft with a new piece of equipment before offering its capabilities to our customers. Slow and steady is the only way to master our craft, and the only way to ensure we’ve checked all the boxes that need to be checked to meet the standards we’re held to.

After we get the new equipment, our team will be busy for a while getting it fine tuned. We’ll run more tests than seems fair. We’ll use some fancy technology to measure, monitor, and judge every part of them. And we’ll love doing it, because we get excited about stuff like this.

Need some gearheads in your life? Give Thermal-Vac a ring to talk shop. We’re always looking for an excuse to shoot the breeze about the hardware that powers our industry.