Handling the heat

He used to be a baker, most recently a production manager in a big bakery. The insecurity in today’s world caused Mr. Tomi Rautaharkko to make a radical change in his working environment. He has been employed at ATA Gears for a year now – as a heat treatment operator.

”In fact, there is a lot that’s the same in this work,” Tomi explains with a wink. ”Both have the same objective, a hard surface and a soft interior. And you need to be able to handle the furnace.” But the temperatures are just a bit different. While a bakery oven likely operates at around 200 degrees, depending on the work stage, in ATA Gears heat treatment the highest temperatures will range from 850 to 950°C, and a piece may stay in the carburising process for days.

Tomi is very excited about his work because it offers him a good combination of hands-on action, creativity and programming. ”When setting up the batches in the furnace, you can use a childlike ”Lego-type creativity” to be able to visualize how best to do it,” Tomi declares. “You also need to understand how the process moves ahead, everything affects everything, and each stage makes its own contribution to consistent quality.

I used to think that here in heat treatment muscular bronzed men worked on metal pieces and pushed them into the oven. It wasn’t exactly like that but surely interesting,” Tomi explains with a smile on his face. ”You cannot rush things.  All the time you need to remember that gears need care and skill so as not to mess up several people’s work and input. You need to respect and value other people’s work.”

Tomi is proud to be working for a world leader in this industry. ”I can be part of the process which produces the world’s finest bevel and cylindrical gears. And I want to learn more. Because I want to understand and be a master in heat treatment.”

ATA Gears is recruiting.

Through our special training programme you can become one of the Gear Doctors. Maybe the best careermove you ever make. If you are interested in joining us, complete a form on the open jobs page.

More from category