ATI announces restructuring of Flat Rolled Products operations
April 20, 2016
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Allegheny Technologies Inc., Pittsburgh, announces the next phase in the restructuring of its Flat Rolled Products (FRP) operations with the reduction of approximately one third of FRP's salaried workforce through the elimination of over 250 positions. This workforce reduction will be completed by the end of the second quarter 2016. As a result of these actions, ATI will record a $9 million severance charge in first quarter 2016 results. These actions are expected to generate annualized cost savings benefits of over $30 million beginning in the third quarter 2016.
"Reducing our flat-rolled products business' dependence on unprofitable commodity products is a difficult process," said Rich Harshman, Chairman, President and CEO. "We believe in U.S. manufacturing. However, it is difficult for a U.S.-based company to compete in the global commodity markets, particularly when significant global overcapacity exists for products such as commodity stainless steel sheet and grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES). The restructuring and right-sizing actions we are taking, while painful for our employees and our company, are necessary to help secure the future of ATI Flat Rolled Products.
"We are in the process of creating a smaller, more agile, streamlined, cohesive, and efficient FRP business that will focus on products and markets with significant technical barriers to entry. As previously announced, our stainless steel facility in Midland, Pa., has been idled to reduce our exposure to commodity stainless steel sheet. Our GOES operation will be idled this month. These actions improve ATI's focus on differentiated flat-rolled products that serve growing global markets. The future restart of the idled operations depends on future business conditions and ATI's ability to earn an acceptable return on invested capital on products manufactured at these operations.
"The reduction in FRP's salaried workforce is another step in our journey to return the FRP business to profitability as quickly as possible, and to execute our strategy for sustainable long-term profitable growth. We expect the FRP business to be modestly profitable in the second half of 2016."
www.ATImetals.com.
Allegheny Technologies Inc., Pittsburgh, announces the next phase in the restructuring of its Flat Rolled Products (FRP) operations with the reduction of approximately one third of FRP’s salaried workforce through the elimination of over 250 positions.
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Solar Atmospheres receives first MedAccred re-accreditation
April 13, 2016
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Solar Atmospheres Inc., Souderton,Pa., announces that it has become the first company to receive MedAccred critical process re-accreditation. Furthermore, the company expanded its scope of accreditation to include Hardness Testing and Metallography & Microindentation Hardness. MedAccred is an industry-managed critical process supply chain oversight program developed by leading medical device companies to improve device quality and enhance patient safety.
The effort to establish MedAccred began in 2010 when the Performance Review Institute (PRI) was asked to consider the development of a Nadcap style special process supplier accreditation program for the medical device industry.
An industry roundtable was organized and convened in 2012 among interested medical device companies and PRI. Following this roundtable meeting, briefings were held with the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health's (CDRH) Office of Compliance and the FDA's Office of Global Operations within the Office of the Commissioner. The program purpose and scope was discussed, along with the results of proof of concept audits conducted to demonstrate the program's viability. The FDA provided positive feedback and strong encouragement to pursue the development of the program.
By 2014, several critical process Task Groups were operating on a formal basis. Program documents were drafted, circulated, and approved by the executives of the participating companies, and audit criteria had been published in several critical process areas. Solar Atmospheres committed to hosting the first MedAccred audit. In early 2015, the first MedAccred critical process accreditation was issued to Solar Atmospheres or Heat Treating.
Today's functioning critical process Task Groups include Cable & Wire Harnesses, Heat Treating, Plastics Injection Molding, Printed Circuit Board Assemblies, Sterilization, and Welding. The industry-managed task groups develop audit criteria, conduct audits, and award MedAccred Critical Process Accreditations to leading suppliers at all tiers in the Medical Device Supply Chain. Many companies are seeking MedAccred Accreditation to demonstrate their commitment to quality and patient safety.
Future MedAccred Task Groups under consideration for development include Material Testing Laboratories, Assemblies, PCBs, Batteries, Chemical Processing, NDT, Cleaning, Coating, Optics, and Packaging.
Active OEM and Contract Manufacturer participants include Johnson & Johnson, Philips, Stryker, GE Healthcare, Medtronic, NYPRO Jabil, Steris, etc. The list of participating suppliers is growing steadily.
www.solaratm.com
Solar Atmospheres Inc., Souderton, Pa., announces that it has become the first company to receive MedAccred critical process re-accreditation, an industry-managed critical process supply chain oversight program developed by leading medical device companies to improve device quality and enhance patient safety.
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Heat-treated powder metallurgy titanium alloy has higher strength, lower cost
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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Wash., announces that its research team has improved the strength of a titanium alloy by producing it via powder metallurgy and heat treating it at different temperatures, then quenching in cold water.
Five decades ago, metallurgists created an alloy named Ti185 by blending titanium with low-cost iron, aluminum, and vanadium. However, superior strength was observed for this alloy only in some places, and the alloy had a tendency to clump. Iron clustered in some areas, leading to beta fleck defects, making the alloy unsuitable for reliable commercial production.
Subsequently, in a study carried out about six years ago, the PNNL researchers and its collaborators devised a low-cost powder metallurgy process for the industrial-scale production of the alloy. They used titanium hydride powder instead of molten titanium as the starting material, reducing the energy requirements significantly and cutting the process time in half. ADMA co-developed the method with PNNL metallurgist Curt Lavender. The company sells advanced materials such as the titanium hydride powder to industries, including aerospace.
In their earlier study, the researchers had already demonstrated the superior mechanical properties of the titanium alloy created from their low-cost process. In the new study, they explored how to make even stronger titanium alloys. The team was able to gain insights into the nanostructure of the alloy by using a unique atom probe imaging approach and powerful electron microscopes.
Using electron microscopy, the team observed the microstructure of the alloy at a resolution of hundreds of nanometers. The atom probe tomography system at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at PNNL, was used to observe the arrangement of individual atoms in 3D.
The researchers found that their optimized heat-treating process produced an alloy with an alpha phase, consisting of micron and nanometer -size precipitate regions, in a matrix of beta phase. Each region has higher concentrations of certain elements. The aluminum and titanium atoms are found inside the nano-sized alpha phase precipitates, whereas vanadium and iron are in the beta phase.
"We found that if you heat treat it first at a higher temperature before a low -temperature heat treatment step, you could create a titanium alloy 10 to 15% stronger than any commercial titanium alloy currently on the market, and that it has roughly double the strength of steel," says Arun Devaraj, Materials Scientist at PNNL
"This alloy is still more expensive than steel, but with its strength-to-cost ratio, it becomes much more affordable with greater potential for lightweight automotive applications," added Vineet Joshi, who serves as a metallurgist at PNNL.
www.pnnl.gov
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Wash., announces that its research team has improved the strength of a titanium alloy by producing it via powder metallurgy and heat treating it at different temperatures, then quenching in cold water.
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Amorphous steel powder metallurgy alloy has highest impact resistance
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The University of California San Diego announces that a team of engineers has developed and tested SAM2X5-630, a type of amorphous steel with a record-breaking ability to withstand impact without deforming permanently. To make the solid materials that comprise the alloy, Prof. Olivia Graeve and her team first mixed iron and other powders in a graphite mold. The powders were then pressurized at 100 MPa or 1000 atmospheres, and exposed to a powerful current of 10,000 amperes at 1165°F during a process called spark plasma sintering.
The process creates an amorphous structure that contains small crystalline regions that are only a few nanometers in size. Researchers believe that these small regions are key to the material's ability to withstand stress. This finding is promising because it shows that the properties of metallic glasses can be fine-tuned to overcome shortcomings such as brittleness, which have prevented them from becoming commercially applicable on a large scale.
Researchers at the University of Southern California, led by Prof. Veronica Eliasson, tested how the alloy responds to shock without undergoing permanent deformation by hitting samples of the material with copper plates fired from a gas gun at 500 to 1300 meters per second. The material did deform on impact, but not permanently.
The Hugoniot Elastic Limit is defined as the maximum shock a material can take without irreversibly deforming. The limit of a 1.5-1.8 mm-thick piece of SAM2X5-630 was measured at 11.76 GPa. By comparison, stainless steel has an elastic limit of 0.2 GPa, while that of tungsten carbide is 4.5 GPa.
The primary focus of future research efforts on these alloys is increasing the weight of the materials to make them more resistant to impacts.
In addition to Prof. Graeve and Prof. Eliasson, co-authors include Prof. Gauri R. Khanolkar and Prof. Andrea M. Hodge at USC, Prof.Michael B. Rauls at Caltech, and Prof. James Kelly from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego.
This research was supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, grant HDTRA1-11-1-0067.
The full study "Shock Wave Response of Iron-based In Situ Metallic Glass Matrix Composites," published on March 2, can be found online at http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22568
http://jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/
The University of California San Diego announces that a team of engineers has developed and tested SAM2X5-630, a type of amorphous steel with a record-breaking ability to withstand impact without deforming permanently.
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H.C. Starck joins WPI Center for Heat Treating Excellence
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H.C. Starck, Newton, Mass., announces that it has joined the team at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Center for Heat Treating Excellence, an alliance between the industrial sector and university researchers that addresses short- and long-term needs in the heat treating and thermal processing industry. Membership in CHTE is unique because members have a voice in selecting quality research projects that help them solve today's business challenges globally.
With close to 100 years of metallurgy experience in the technology metals molybdenum, tantalum, niobium, and tungsten, H.C. Starck has a wealth of research, technical knowledge, and experience to share.
"With our commitment to quality and technological expertise, we work side by side with our customers to ensure they have the highest quality product," says Dmitry Shashkov, Member of H.C. Starck's Executive Board and Head of the Fabricated Products Division. "We are also rapidly growing our business to match the demands of the global marketplace, working with OEM and aftermarket furnace manufacturers on their new designs. To match this growth, H.C. Starck has made significant investments in our fabrication capabilities, and we are leading the development of new materials for high-temperature applications to improve cost and performance for our customers."
H.C. Starck supplies fabricated products to OEMs, end-users, and aftermarket furnace manufacturers for heat treating medical, aerospace, defense, automotive, energy, nuclear fuel, crystal growth, and waste treatment products.
www.hcstarck.com
H.C. Starck, Newton, Mass., announces that it has joined the team at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Heat Treating Excellence, an alliance between the industrial sector and university researchers that addresses short- and long-term needs in the heat treating and thermal processing industry.
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Selective separation sintering enables 3D printed parts to be made of Martian materials
April 8, 2016
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The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, announces that a novel 3D-printing process called selective separation sintering has won the NASA competition for a technology that could enable space travelers to build structures of crushed basalt rock and regolith found on Mars.
Selective separation sintering (SSS) is a powder layer-based additive manufacturing approach. In the printing process, a dry powder of higher sintering temperature (S powder) is deposited into the base powder (B powder) of lower sintering temperature, outlining the shape of the part. When printing of all layers is completed, the material is sintered at the lower temperature, making a solid part that is easy to remove from the S powder. SSS can reportedly fabricate high-temperature ceramic and metallic parts at comparatively lower cost with high quality.
According to Prof. Behrokh Khoshnevis and his team, who won the NASA competition, the technology is suitable for building structures such as blast walls, hangars, radiation shields, and landing pads on the Moon and Mars. Preliminary results have proven the capability of SSS in successfully printing ceramic and metallic parts. Future experiments are planned for improving the process resolution.
The printing time in SSS, which is linearly proportional to the size of the part, becomes relatively shorter for larger parts. The S-powder in SSS is removed completely, hence no contamination remains on the part or on the sintering furnace. In addition, the cost of the SSS hardware is said to be a fraction of all other machines for additive manufacturing.
Details of the SSS process including diagrams are here: http://sffsymposium.engr.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/2015/2015-6-Zhang.pdf
www.usc.edu
The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, announces that a novel 3D-printing process called selective separation sintering has won the NASA competition for a technology that could enable space travelers to build structures of crushed basalt rock and regolith found on Mars.
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3D-printed metal aircraft parts
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Alcoa, Pittsburgh, entered into an agreement with Airbus, France, to supply 3D-printed metal parts for commercial aircraft. The parts will be produced using comprehensive capabilities—from multimaterial alloy development to additive manufacturing and aerospace parts qualification. The first additive manufactured parts are expected to be delivered midyear.
The agreement draws on Alcoa's aerospace experience and new technologies gained through its recent acquisition of RTI. The company also recently invested in 3D-printing and metallic powder production capabilities at its technical center outside of Pittsburgh.
Last year, Alcoa acquired RTI International Metals (RTI)—now known as Alcoa Titanium & Engineered Products (ATEP)—which grew its additive manufacturing capabilities to include 3D-printed titanium and specialty metals parts produced at ATEP's Austin, Texas facility. The Airbus agreement draws on these capabilities as well as ATEP's titanium ingot melting and billetizing, machining, finishing, and inspection technologies.
Alcoa will use advanced CT scan and hot isostatic pressing (HIP) capabilities at its advanced aerospace facility in Whitehall, Mich. HIP strengthens the metallic structures of traditional and additive manufactured parts made of titanium and nickel based superalloys. Through a $22 million investment in the technology, Alcoa today owns and operates one of the largest aerospace HIP technology complexes in the world.
Additionally, Alcoa is bolstering its additive manufacturing capabilities through a $60 million expansion in advanced 3D-printing materials and processes, including metallic powders. The expansion is located at the Alcoa Technical Center near Pittsburgh.
Alcoa, Pittsburgh, entered into an agreement with Airbus, France, to supply 3D-printed metal parts for commercial aircraft.
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Conveyor oven maximizes uniform adhesive cure on aluminum
April 5, 2016
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Wisconsin Oven Corp., East Troy, has shipped a natural-gas-fired three-zone curing conveyor oven to a leader in metal fabrication to cure a solvent-based adhesive that will be printed on a continuous corrugated aluminum web. The curing oven will be placed in a complete printing line, and is designed to handle a corrugated aluminum web 24 inches wide and 0.125-inch thick, weighing up to one pound per square foot or less. The adhesive deposition will be up to 300 mg/sq. ft. on the top surface only.
The curing oven has a maximum temperature rating of 300°F; the work chamber is 25 feet long, 2.3 feet wide, and six inches high. The chamber has three zones of heat control: each zone is 8 1/3 feet long.
Zone 3 may be used as a cool-down zone, with the recirculation and exhaust blower operating and the burner off. The belt conveyor oven utilizes a stainless steel flat flex belt for thermal efficiency. The recirculation system is configured with top-down airflow, which provides uniform heat distribution along the top of the aluminum web, and is optimal for an even cure of the applied adhesive.
"With this project, we wanted to make sure the oven design would maximize the uniformity of the cure," says Tom Trueman, Senior Application Engineer of Wisconsin Oven. "The three temperature zones and top-down airflow were the ideal solution, because the zones give the customer the flexibility to adjust the process for the best end result."
www.wisoven.com
Wisconsin Oven Corp., East Troy, has shipped a natural-gas-fired three-zone curing conveyor oven to a leader in metal fabrication to cure a solvent-based adhesive that will be printed on a continuous corrugated aluminum web.
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Continuous roller hearth system heat treats aluminum automotive castings
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Consolidated Engineering Company (CEC), Kennesaw, Ga., has received a purchase order for a continuous roller hearth T6 system with a water quench and age oven from an aluminum casting company in the United States. The system is designed for the heat treatment of cast aluminum knuckles and other automotive castings. The company is a rapidly growing foundry business that has been consistently winning automotive orders .
High pressure die casting, in which molten aluminum is injected into a metal die, now accounts for more than half of all aluminum castings worldwide. This manufacturing method has been shown to be particularly suitable for making complex parts for automobiles. These castings are often used as sheet or extrusion connectors to tie together portions of all-aluminum car spaceframes (chassis), which are finding broader application in high-end cars.
CEC manufactures solutionizing furnaces for all types of castings, forgings, extrusions and tubing, and has extensive experience in heat treating castings. To date, CEC's T4 & T6 installations process more than 57 million aluminum cylinder heads, engine blocks, and wheels every year. CEC has invented and developed solution heat-treatment machine innovations and processes that have generated more than 105 patents.
To develop and optimize processes, more than 6350 CEC sponsored or funded casting tests have been run to prove process innovations. The corporate focus is to save operating costs and pollution while improving product quality. CEC invented and remains the world leader in trayless and basketless head, block, and wheel casting processing.
www.cec-intl.com
Consolidated Engineering Company (CEC), Kennesaw, Ga., has received a purchase order for a continuous roller hearth T6 system with a water quench and age oven for the heat treatment of cast aluminum knuckles and other automotive castings.
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VertiQuench technology optimizes heat treatment for aluminum tubes
Source: ASM International
Seco Warwick, Meadville, Pa., exhibited its VertiQuench aluminum solution heat treatment furnaces and aging systems at Tube 2016 in Dusseldorf.
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