H&L® Uniforge® H&L Tooth Company began producing forged digging teeth in the early 1930’s under original patents being issued to partners Chester C. Hosmer and Ernie L. Launder. H&L’s UniforgeÒ process is the reshaping, resizing and the creation of reduction in grain flow to alloy steels under extreme pressures. Our unique horizontal up-setters produces the desired tooth configuration for all styles of Teeth for ground engaging applications! H&L’s 200,000 square foot facility in Tulsa Oklahoma houses 9 separate forge lines. Forging of tooth tips are shaped on horizontally operated machines known as up-setters. Underthe roof in Tulsa are two 4” and two 6” upsetter lines that produce small backhoe teeth weighing just under 3 pounds, up to a 30 pounds tooth. H&L ripper teeth are produced on a 7 ½”-upsetter, the creation of teeth weighing up to 100 pounds. H&LÒ mining teeth are produced on two 9” upsetters that can produce parts in excess of two-hundred pounds in many styles. Each forge line is equipped with up to six additional supporting units, consisting of electric induction heaters, secondary vertical presses used for part trimming, attachment hole punching and coining procedures. H&L upsetter “closed-die” design controls steel deformation of the alloy steels by reducing its grain flow, resulting in superior metallurgical soundness, and improves the mechanical properties of digging teeth for extreme and severe field digging applications. Our teeth are forged from quality steel mills, and uses a high Silicon HL400 alloys. All steels used in our Ground Engaging Tooth Products must first meet the metallurgical specifications set forth by ASTM Standards that govern the production of alloy steels. In most cases H&L® stock material to be forged has already been reduced in size by the steel supplier to refine the dendrite structure of a steel ingot. This continued refining is achieved by successive rolling by operations, which reduces the cross section of the steel size under pressure. Rolling eliminates small process porosity, creating bar crystalline structure refinement of the base metal, and orienting any steel alloy segregation in the direction of the rolled work. The H&L® forging process continues this alignment of directional flow of the forged Ò tooth with horizontal upsetting. This additional grain flow refinement of H&L teeth is accomplished during the successive rolling and four-stages of upsetter working of