Toll sintering is heating up

DSH Technologies LLC is a new toll sintering house that recently opened for business in a new plant in Cedar Grove, NJ. It provides one-step debinding, sintering, and heat treating of green MIM parts, charging customers anywhere from $950 to $1500 per run. A typical run usually averages about 12 hours.

DSH Technologies is a new company, but, actually, its top man wears a face familiar to many in the MIM community. He is Claus J. Joens, president of a company that builds one of the most popular MIM batch furnaces around—Elnik Systems.

There presently are more than 25 of Elnik Systems’ MIM 3000 furnaces in the field. Joens says his batch furnaces are the only ones out there designed and built expressly for MIM. His customers include many of the biggest established PIM molders and suppliers, and some of the biggest PIM newcomers from the plastics injection molding world, as well.

Setting Up Shop
DSH Technologies, a separate entity and profit center, occupies 1000 sq ft of Elnik Systems’ new 18,000-sq-ft furnace manufacturing facility in Cedar Grove. DSH is in a controlled access area for maintaining confidentiality. Joens stresses that DSH Technologies will be strictly noncompetitive.

"We have no intention of bringing an injection molding machine in here and getting into that part of the business. Most of the toll sintering we have done is tryouts and R&D work," Joens explains. "We also have helped manufacturers that need additional short-term debinding and sintering capacity because of a big order that has come in. And we can help new furnace customers get started. If a customer requires, say, three part runs and we charge $1500 per run, we will refund the full $4500 when the customer buys the furnace."

Joens is confident DSH Technologies will be successful. "Otherwise I would not have made the investment," he jokes. But he feels the biggest return will be in expanding Elnik Systems’ knowledge. That, he says, will benefit all.

"We have learned over the years that it is our customers that know MIM technology and where it is going. We can continue to learn from them, and supply them with even better systems."