MIRDC has received a prestigious Bronze Award at 2026 Edison Awards for its groundbreaking innovation, Next-Gen SHT, an advanced intelligent heat-treatment system designed for cast material.

As global demand grows for high-performance and net-zero manufacturing, traditional austempering processes still rely heavily on fixed parameters and manual experience, often resulting in repeated trial-and-error, lengthy development cycles, and inconsistent product quality. To address these challenges, MIRDC has developed the first Next-Gen SHT, integrating AI vision, adaptive learning, and intelligent alloy design. The system enables real-time adjustment of heat-treatment parameters based on material variation and performance needs.

The system utilizes high-precision AI vision technology to rapidly analyze the nodularity and microstructure of ductile iron with 95% accuracy, improving inspection efficiency by three times. The analyzed data further enables the AI module to continuously self-learn and automatically optimize alloy design and process parameters, maintaining heat-treatment error margin with plus-minus5%.

Furthermore, the system integrates three core modules: a high-temperature furnace, a low-temperature salt bath, and a filtration unit. These modules maintain stable furnace temperatures, preserve microstructure integrity, and achieve 80% recovery rate for treatment media.

Products processed by Next-Gen SHT demonstrate significantly enhanced performance, with tensile strength increased to 1,300 MPa and elongation reaching 13%. At the same time, the technology shortens development time by 40%, reduces process energy consumption by 71%, and lowers production costs by 66%.

This technology has already been applied to key components for green energy systems and agricultural machinery equipment. In the future, it will be further expanded into high-end applications in the fields of energy, smart electromechanical systems, and transportation vehicles.