Is it common practice for a bake oven to require a CQI-9?

inspector625

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Good Morning,

I am wondering if someone can help me. We are a manufacturing facility that produces fasteners for Aerospace and Automotive. We currently out source our heat treating but do our own passivation in house. For some fasteners we are required to bake after passivation for 4 hours at 400°F. Our customer has just stated that we are required to do a CQI-9 for this process. My question is when does a bake oven become a furnace? Is it common practice for a bake oven to require a CQI-9? Any information is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for everyone's time.
 
N

ncwalker

Ah the CQI-9. :)

Very familiar with this.

Let me make sure I understand your question. When you say "passivation," to me that is a coating (like a phosphate coating) primarily for rust prevention, though it could be used for other things. Part of this process is "baking" in that it is thermal. But not so much so that (I assume we are talking steel parts) that you could affect things like mechanical properties and grain structure. I mean, 400 deg F isn't anywhere near the transformation temperature of steel.

If this is indeed your process, you are correct. A bake oven is not subject to CQI-9.

When does it become a part of this? When the SQ you have who is asking for it doesn't understand the process and they just hear the words "heat" and "temperature" and immediately think CQI-9.

My advice?

Your best bet is to tell them "The baking process is just used to thermally set the passivation. It does not approach the transformation temperature of steel so it is not a heat treat process."

Maybe they will buy it, maybe not.

Be very careful - I am actually surprised the SQ isn't asking for CQI-12 because passivation falls under a coating. You may dodge one bullet to get hit by another. Although - if you DO have CQI-12 done on your passivation process, you could certainly say "Look here, this is covered by CQI-12, here is our copy ..."
 
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