Mark Saline receives MPIF distinguished service award

Gasbarre, Dubois, PaA, announced that Mark Saline, president of Gasbarre Thermal Processing Systems, is a recipient of the 2023 MPIF Distinguished Service to Powder Metallurgy (PM) Award that recognizes individuals who have actively served the North American PM industry for at least 25 years.The award is selected by the Metal Powder Industries Federation’s (MPIF) Awards Committee.

Over 70 nominated individuals were on the ballot for review by the past 10 years of Distinguished Service Award recipients, as well as the MPIF Board of Governors and Boards of Directors of the MPIF trade associations. Mark Saline will receive his award during PowderMet 2023 in Las Vegas. Mark has been well established in the Powder Metallurgy industry for many years. His PM involvement includes teaching students at the PM Sintering Seminar, sitting on the MPIF Program Committee, judging the PM Design Excellence Awards, he has written several publications on processing in continuous furnaces, and he provides input in organizations such as the Center for Powder Metal Technology, Powder Metal Equipment Association, and the Association for Metal Additive Manufacturing. Mark will also serve at the Conference Technical Chair-Person for PowderMet 2024 in Pittsburgh.

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One Minute Mentor: Vacuum Furnaces

The demands on vacuum-hardening technology have changed in recent decades. One of the most important considerations that must be met is the accomplishment of highest dimensional stability with optimal microstructural properties and minimal change of the surface of the workpieces. 

Minimizing exposure to air during the heat treatment by reducing the quantity of oxygen in a heat treatment furnace, as with creating a vacuum, is an excellent method for preventing changes in surface appearance and chemical composition.

Suppliers of modern vacuum furnaces are further faced with new demands, such as increasing quenching speed to improve microstructural and mechanical properties by reducing grain size, and enhancing hardness and toughness and/or reducing distortion due to the hardening process. Furthermore, quality standards such as AMS 2750d or North American Die Casting Association (NADCA), which describe temperature homogeneity or quenching speeds and resulting and needed workpiece properties, had a significant effect on furnace design and process control.

For more information, click on the link below (subscription required). Then scroll to Figure 14

R Schneider ; R. Mesquita ; H. Altena ; T. Müller ; P. Seemann,Processes and Furnace Equipment for Heat Treating of Tool Steels, ASM International, 2014, https://doi.org/10.31399/asm.hb.v04d.a0005958

One Minute Mentor: Continuous Operating Furnaces for Tool Steel Strips

The continuous heat treatment of tool steel is applied to low- or medium-alloyed carbon steel strips as well as martensitic stainless steels. The described lines produce high-quality strip with respect to uniform structure, flatness, and bright surface finish. Steel grades with 0.4 to 1.2% C, low and high alloyed, can be processed. Strip dimensions range between 10 to 750 mm (0.4 to 29.5 in.) wide and 0.05 to 4 mm (0.002 to 0.16 in.) thick. High quenching rates are necessary, especially for plain carbon steels. Cooling gradients of up to 600 K/s are possible in a molten lead-bismuth quench. Because two-stage quenching technology provides considerable advantages over quenching in oil, this method has been adopted worldwide. It is also possible to achieve isothermal transformation to bainite and pearlite using a molten metal quench, so this type of hardening and tempering line is extremely versatile.

The configuration of a high-performance line involves an entry and exit section of the strip handling equipment (Fig. 10). The hardening section consists of the austenitizing furnace, the molten metal quench or hydrogen quench, and a martensite cooler. Beyond the martensite cooler the strip is martensitic and fully hardened, and then it passes through the tempering section—consisting of a leveling furnace, tempering furnace equipped with an atmosphere recirculation system, and an atmosphere jet cooler—to finally leave the facility, completely flat, with a bright surface finish and tempered to very uniform tensile strength.

For more information, click on the link below (subscription required). Then scroll to Figure 10

R Schneider ; R. Mesquita ; H. Altena ; T. Müller ; P. Seemann,Processes and Furnace Equipment for Heat Treating of Tool Steels, ASM International, 2014, https://doi.org/10.31399/asm.hb.v04d.a0005958

Spray Tips: Thermal Spray Process

Thermal spray coatings exhibit a unique microstructural architecture. Coatings are formed as melted and partially melted particles of different sizes impact substrates at a rate of perhaps one million particles per second, and build up one upon the other.

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Spray Tips: Coating Structures

The angle of impingement of the spray stream is a source of porosity, because of shadowing. The diagram illustrates the type of shadowing generally associated with coatings sprayed at angles below 45° from the optimal normal angle of incidence.

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Spray Tips: What is a Splat?

Splat is the term given to a single impacted droplet/particle, as illustrated in the diagram. Many overlapping splats solidify and adhere to one another to form a continuous coating layer. Thus, the splat is the basic structural building block in thermal spray coatings.

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Spray Tips: Cold Spray Equipment

Cold spray has come to be understood as a materials deposition process in which relatively small particles in the solid state are accelerated to high velocities and deposited on a surface by an impaction process.

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Message from the President: Hall of Fame and President Awards

This year again, key thermal spray leaders were introduced to the TSS Hall of Fame to recognize their exceptional contributions to the science, technology, practice, education, management, and advancement of thermal spraying. The recipients of this most prestigious award are selected by the Hall of Fame Selection Committee, and nominations are approved by the TSS Board. The new Hall of Fame inductees were recognized in a special awards session at ITSC 2016 in Shanghai.

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Particle Trajectories in Plasma Spray

The diagram illustrates the various trajectories that particle distributions may follow. Each trajectory shown represents extremes in particle heating, and this affects the average condition of the particles on impact (liquid, solid + liquid).

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Spray Tips: Detonation Gun

In detonation gun spraying, an explosive mixture of fuel, oxygen, and powder is introduced into a long tube/barrel and is ignited by a spark plug. The resulting detonation-pressure wave heats and accelerates the entrained powder particles, which travel down the water-cooled barrel toward the substrate. Nitrogen is used to purge the barrel between detonations.

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