Category: News Articles

Tohoku University, Japan, reports that its researchers and colleagues have found an economical way to improve the properties of copper-aluminum-manganese 'shape memory' alloys by a unique heat treating method.

Engineered components – from bearings to turbine blades and everything in between – acquire much of their value and application readiness during controlled heating and cooling cycles, otherwise known as heat treating. Though practiced for millennia, the process of heat treating has only, in the last century or so, given up its secrets, making it possible for manufacturers to consistently produce steel and nonferrous metal parts with specific properties and predictable lifetime and performance ranges.

The diagram illustrates an aspirating-type volumetric feeder, in which a continuous circumferential groove in a powder-feed wheel fills with powder by gravity.

Diesel engine maker Cummins Inc., Columbus, Ind., is working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop a material to repair heavy-duty vehicle engines damaged by a million miles of extreme conditions under the hood.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT, Germany, has developed a new approach that incorporates a green laser for selective laser melting of copper materials.

EOS, Germany, introduces StainlessSteel 17-4PH IndustryLine, an iron-based metal alloy powder made by a technology that includes a specially developed process parameter for additive manufacturing on the EOS M 290 metal system.