William Jones receives ASM Distinguished Life Membership Award
November 15, 2016
Pictured left to right at the event: Jamie Jones, VP of Operations at the Souderton Facility (grandson), William Jones, CEO of the Solar Atmospheres Family of Companies, and Roger Jones, Corporate President of Solar Atmospheres (son)
Solar Atmospheres, Souderton, Pennsylvania, USA, has announced that the company’s CEO, William R Jones, has been presented with an ASM Distinguished Life Membership Award. The ASM Distinguished Life Membership is conferred on those who have devoted their time, knowledge and abilities to the advancement of the materials industries. The award was presented for innovations in the field of vacuum furnace technology and applying this technology to enhance metallurgical thermal processes around the world.
Jones holds a degree in electrical technology from the Pennsylvania State University. His entire career has been associated with the development and application of electromechanical products, and since 1962 with vacuum heat treating furnaces. He holds numerous patents in this field and has long been associated with ASM, Metal Treating Institute, and related technical organisations.
He received the Philadelphia Chapter Delaware Valley Metals Man of the Year Award in 1988 and the Philadelphia Chapter William Hunt Eisenman Award in 1992. Jones is a Fellow of ASM International (1989), is the recipient of the ASM International William Hunt Eisenman Award (1995), the ASM Heat Treating Society’s George H Bodeen Heat Treating Achievement Award (2005), and the Metal Treating Institute Heritage Award (2013).
Jones founded Vacuum Furnace Systems Corporation (1978), Solar Atmospheres (1983), a commercial vacuum heat treating company with plants in Eastern Pennsylvania, Western Pennsylvania, Southern California, and Greenville, South Carolina, and Solar Atmospheres Manufacturing (2002), a vacuum furnace manufacturing company, and VPS (2016), a vacuum pump service and rebuild company.
