ECM was started in SEYSSINET-PARISET, a town attached to Grenoble, France. They’ve been a company since 1928 when they started using heat treat furnaces.
Since the 1960’s, ECM personnel have been dedicated to understanding temperature control, high pressures, vacuums, and the behavior of materials. They evolved their company to expand outside the European market. They expanded to ECM USA and ECM China around 1998.
“Mostly we serve the automotive industry and heat treaters,” said Stacey Liebke, business and marketing manager for ECM. “Pinions, gears, transmissions, shafts and gearboxes. Of course, we have some customers outside this genre that we heat treat, blades for the clipper industry, cutting saws, and parts for the aerospace industry. Mostly, though, our focus is on the automobile industry.”
ECM specializes in anything heat treat-related, but their main focus is low pressure vacuum carburizing. “We’ve really mastered this process,” said Liebke. “We’ve created our own system of recipe development. We’ve mastered this process for so many industries: automobile, aerospace, etc. Many different companies work with gears and shafts, and gears are mostly what our furnaces are used for.”
ECM is a family owned company that is headquartered in Grenoble, France. It started out with Mr. Francis Pelissier owning and buying up multiple smaller companies and, using the knowledge of all these companies, forming them into the ECM group. The goal was to maximize all the information to develop the ECM furnace into what it is today, moving forward and standardizing the vacuum carburizing process.
Their facility here in the U.S. is a, 5000 sq. ft. building in Kenosha, WI. From their office in Kenosha, they do sales, service, and spare parts only—everything else is manufactured in France and shipped directly to the customer.
“We send our experienced team there to help with the startup and testing,” said Liebke. “We take it from there and address all our customers’ needs after that. Our field assistance logistics service can provide ‘as needed’ solutions. Remote assistance has been set up to accelerate and facilitate service.”
ECM Technologies invests about 10% of its sales in R&D for the development of thermal processes, with high added value and the creation of innovative furnaces and machines. Vincent Lelong, a metallurgist for ECM, explained the company’s patented Infracarb system. “Infracarb is the process of cracking the molecules in the hydrocarbon gas (Acetylene or Propane) in the austenitic temperature range and under constant vacuum (1 to 15mb) to introduce carbon atoms in the steel. Infracarb carburizing process is based on the software CBPWin to achieve customer requirements of carbon content and effective case depth of carburizing by sequences of boosts of carburizing and boosts of diffusion under nitrogen.”
This expertise, on an industrial scale, has always been enriched by ECM’s close partnership with furnace users, engineers, heat treat engineers, and developers. Today, their knowledge base is at the core of the customers’ production lines on over 180 systems with almost 1000 heating cells in operation. It is this concern for caring and listening, combined with a passion for their profession, that has formed ECM and ECM USA’s recognized spirit of innovation.
“We’re in the same time zone as many of our customers,” said Liebke. “Once they have the machine, it’s nice to be able to have our service department service those calls. We’re right here in the Midwest, where all the auto industry is. It’s very convenient to be so close to our customers. We service North America, Canada, and Mexico. About 75 percent of our customers are in this general area.”
For More Information:
To learn more about ECM products and services, visit them online at www.ecm-usa.com or call (262) 605-4810.
