Heat treaters are continuously looking for new ways and new alloys that will improve performance at lower cost. This leads to the stainless steel realm of alloys, including the historical favorite 310 stainless, as well as relative newcomer 253MA^®. 

One of the most critical innovations surrounding the extension of cold-spray materials processing from a non-structural repair or coating acquisition into a structural repair and solid-state additive manufacturing (AM) is the development of thermal-preprocessing technology for the feedstock powder.

Sun-Tec Corporation, ASTM members, uniquely specializes in hardness testing equipment that includes Rockwell-type, Vickers/Knoop, Brinell, ductility and tension/compression, along with metallographic equipment and consumables.

Verder Scientific formally agreed to acquire all shares of Dexter, Mich.-based Mager Scientific Inc., a distributor of metallographic and hardness testing equipment. Verder Scientific is a division of the Verder Group, a group of companies engaged in the global development, manufacturing and distribution of products and services for scientific applications. Mager Scientific has represented Verder Group’s QATM product lines for metallographic preparation and hardness testing since 2005.

We are pleased to contribute editorial for this quarterly column. Over the coming year, we will share the advancements we are making at the Advanced Casting Research Center on innovative processing methods for cast components; measurement of heat-transfer coefficient and other critical process parameters; big-data research; and advanced-alloy development initiatives. 

Solar Atmospheres of Western PA (SAWPA) can now offer in-house metallographic testing with the purchase of a Zeiss AxioVert A1 inverted materials microscope, accompanying Axiocam digital camera and Zen Core materials-analysis software package. The AxioVert A1 system allows for reflected brightfield, darkfield, polarized and circular contrasting techniques, along with a 50x to 1000x magnification range. The additional Axiocam and Zen Core materials-analysis software features automated determination of material grain size.

If you are doing failure analysis, you need to be able to tell if the component was made by the specified process.

“Polishing Guide” includes application and process information for metallography lab technicians.

The microstructure of a material represents its fundamental properties, and most heat treatments are performed to tailor these properties to a specific need. Good metallographic preparation allows faster and more-accurate quality control – whether a microstructural inspection or performing specific tests such as case-depth analysis.