Novelis, Atlanta, has commissioned a $200 million expansion of its rolling operations in Oswego, N.Y. The expansion increases the company’s North American capacity for producing aluminum sheet for the automotive industry by 240,000 tons, five times the company’s existing capacity in the region.

Royal DSM, the Netherlands, won the Soldier Technology Award’s Best Light-Weight Protective Product for the Soldier category for their molecular weight polyethylene fiber, Dyneema. It was chosen for its unmatched ballistic performance in body armor combined with its light weight and flexibility for significantly improved personal comfort and mobility. The award was presented to Richard Gunters, key account manager EMEA, at a ceremony in London in June 12.

Seco/Warwick Corp., Meadville, Pa., announces that Seco/Warwick Allied, Mumbai, India, has commissioned a ferritic nitrocarburizing furnace for heat treating bearing cages for Harsh Engineers Ltd., India. These systems are designed to increase product uniformity and tribological  properties. It is capable of establishing a case depth of 8 to 25 microns with very low porosity.

AFC-Holcroft, Wixom, Mich., announces that Sona BLW Precision Forge, Selma, N.C., has purchased a new UBQ (Universal Batch Quench) furnace and support equipment for its heat treating facility. AFC-Holcroft customized a standard UBQ furnace, typically rated at 3500 lb load capacity, to the 4000-lb capacity the customer required. The new equipment consists of a UBQ integral quench batch furnace with an effective work zone that is 36 in. wide x 48 in. long x 36 in. high.

Keighley Laboratories, UK, has enlarged the size of one of its largest pit furnaces, increasing dimensions to 3.6 ft working diameter and almost 5.9 ft  max length, in the process gaining 30% in overall capacity. The inner shell or retort is made from duplex stainless steel.  At the same time, it has upgraded the lifting capacity of its overhead crane to 3 metric tons. The crane services all seven pit furnaces, a salt bath, and tempering equipment.   Enlarging the No.

ThyssenKrupp Aerospace, Germany, has moved to a new building at Vitrolles near Marseille, France, mainly dedicated to supporting a major customer in the area. The company will stock materials such as aluminum, titanium, copper, and steel in bars, plates, sheets, rounds, and more. The Vitrolles facility will manage over 20,000 working orders per year, about half of which will be prefabricated in-house prior to shipment.

United States Steel Corp., Pittsburgh, introduces Acrylume E Plus, a coated flat-rolled steel that has a chromium-free clear emissive polymer coating, and provides all of the quality and performance attributes of Acrylume, with improved thermal emittance. As with Acrylume and Acrylume CF, Acrylume E Plus minimizes staining and discoloration during storage, handling, and installation, and both products can be used in the same end-use applications.

ASB Industries, Barberton, Ohio, announces that its Heavy Duty Grinder, which is five feet in diameter and 24 feet long, will be modernized at a cost of approximately $400,000. Rebuild will begin in June and is expected to take approximately six months. This major capital investment will allow two-axis grinding for complex roll crowns with extreme accuracy and efficiency.   Thermal Spray surfacing materials require different grinding media to achieve critical surface finishes.

Alcoa Aerospace, Pittsburgh, announces that it has upgraded and expanded aluminum-lithium casting capacity at the Kitts Green plant in England. It has also expanded capacity by 30% at its Technology Center in Alcoa Center, Pa. The third phase of the expansion is a new $90 million facility under construction adjacent to the plant in Lafayette, Ind., that will provide an additional 20,000 metric tons of aluminum lithium.

GE Aviation, Cincinnati, will invest $27 million to develop advanced manufacturing methods for ceramic matrix composites at its plant in Newark, Del. Engineers at GE Global Research designed machines that coat the ceramic fibers, compress the fibers into tapes, and mold the tapes into shaped panels that are then fused in a furnace. The process can produce parts such as turbine shrouds, combustor liners, turbine blades, and fairings.

Ambrell Inc., Scottsdale, N.Y., is exhibiting its Easyheat induction heating system with robotics from Nutek Industrial Systems, Broadview Heights, Ohio, at the Heat Treat Expo. Additionally, tooling from Induction Tooling (ITI) will be on display in booth 2102, and a newly designed modular Ekoheat will be exhibited.   The Ekoheat line now offers power up to 1.2 MW, enabling the product line to address higher power heat treating applications.

Thermal Spray Technologies, Sun Prairie, Wis., has celebrated one million hours with no lost time.. “One million hours with no lost time is a notable accomplishment in an industry with a high potential for injury,” said John Fehl, a member of the Thermal Spray Technologies production team. Generally, manufacturing companies experience workplace injuries every one to two months.

ALD Vacuum Technologies, East Windsor, Conn., has developed SyncroTherm, a system that enables integrating heat treatment directly into the machining production line. The heat treatment of large batches is converted to treatment of single components, where parts are charged in one layer on one workpiece carrier. The flat-panel radiators installed in top and bottom radiate the heat directly onto each part, heating the “2D-charges” rapidly and homogeneously.

It is only a couple of molecules thick, and could not be thinner: the sheet of glass that scientists at the University of Ulm, Germany and Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., discovered by accident. This discovery was acknowledged as a world record with an entry in Guinness World Records 2014. “Although glass is indeed transparent, the individual silicon and oxygen atoms can be made visible under the electron microscope,” explains Ute Kaiser, professor of experimental physics at Ulm.

Metallisation, UK, has developed a durable non-slip thermally sprayed coating called 28E Arctec. It is a reinforced aluminum-based non-slip coating ideal for flooring areas, bridge decks, escalators, steel floors, and panels across a range of industries. It can be applied with a rough texture and has excellent non-slip properties, while being extremely hard and resistant to wear and corrosion.   28E Arctec is applied by the Metallisation arcspray process with the ARC 140 system.