Editorial

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As it happens, much of this month’s coverage focuses on gears or the processes used to harden them. This month’s article topics include nitriding, hardening atmospheres, heating elements, furnace inspection, and gear materials and their heat treatment.

With our industry benefiting from the demand for materials to supply the growing shale-gas industry and the cheaper natural gas pricing resulting from it, this column will provide some information for you to fact-check what you are hearing in the news.

This month’s cover demonstrates that we have been providing a Buyers Guide as a resource for our readers for over 20 years. Over that time, it has evolved into an unparalleled tool for readers to locate the products/processes/companies they need to do business with.

Our automotive thermal-processing issue is our annual opportunity to take the pulse of the automotive-industry sector of our market. Reviewing the news of the day seems to result in several topics: market health, fuel options, material developments and new technologies. Let’s have a look at each.

If you’re a little skeptical of the social-media revolution, you’re not alone. Believe it or not, some out there still prefer reading their news on paper rather than a computer screen. Well, we’re here to get you caught up.

For a while now, I have wanted to put together an editorial with some quotes from noted thinkers. Often, those who have gone before us in this adventure we call life, or our career, can help us if we take the time to listen. This column offers a few ideas on how we can learn from those sages that surround us or have gone before us.

February again brings us to the month in which we focus on nonferrous materials and processing. For this reason, we will use this space to look at what is happening in this industry, which for our purposes is primarily aluminum and copper.

The next new thing is always difficult to put a finger on. Government believes they are able to pick the next new thing, but often even they (in all of their wisdom?) get it wrong. Here are a few things with ties to our industry that just might impact us in the months and years ahead.

At year end, it’s important to reflect on what has happened in the recent past and how future adjustments might affect the future. As the title indicates, we will be reflecting on new and upcoming regulations. Why? Because regulations are a part of the reason we are stuck at 9% unemployment and why business leaders are so uncertain of our economic future and unwilling to invest in it to create jobs.