The Andy Warhol Foundation (AWF) learned that it is not a good idea to rely on the fair-use defense in a copyright infringement case on May 18, 2023, when the Supreme Court issued its decision in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, 598 U.S. ___ (2023). The case centered around three artists: Andy Warhol, Lynn Goldsmith and Prince. Specifically, around a photographic portrait that Ms. Goldsmith took of the now deceased artist Prince in 1981 for Newsweek magazine.

Someone recently suggested to their aluminum-brazing client that they should conduct a high-temperature burnout cycle in their vacuum furnace by “heating the furnace to 1600°F to ensure that all the oxides are removed.” Unfortunately, this statement is not correct...

This is the conclusion of David Pye's blog on the time-temperature-transformation (TTT) curve.

The National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) scheduled a public hearing for May 31 to receive a report and hold a discussion on potential elements of a proposed heat-injury and illness-prevention standard. That is a long way of saying that OSHA is one step closer to regulating both indoor and outdoor workspaces when the heat index exceeds 80°F. 

An additional consequence of the “counterfeit bolt scandal” was that most of the people in the industry learned that the bake had to be within one hour of the parts exiting the plating bath.

We are providing lots of automotive coverage this month.  Being a blog, this coverage may add a bit more editorializing than this month’s podcast or editorial/commentary.

The observation of the iron-carbon equilibrium diagram can only be a guide to the process temperature selection simply because the diagram is based only on iron and carbon without any additional alloying elements (in equilibrium). Alloy additions to the alloy steels will disturb what is observed from the iron-carbon equilibrium diagram, and no industrial process is in equilibrium.

The history of “rail roads” goes back to as early as 1550 when roads of rails – called wagonways – came into use in Germany. The first tram road was laid down in England in 1776 with cast-iron angle bars on timber ties. In 1789, Englishman William Jessup designed the first wagons with flanged wheels to run the rails.

Brazing-shop personnel sometimes make a big mistake by discarding the diffusion-pump “oil” from their vacuum furnaces right along with all the other containers of used oil from their shop operations, including all the oils from mechanical pumps or lubricants from forming/machining operations. This is a BIG mistake!

President Biden will sit down in the White House on May 9 with the top-four leaders from Capitol Hill to begin discussions to prevent the U.S. government from default by exceeding its borrowing limit. The Treasury Department set a June 1 deadline for the debt-ceiling breach. However, most here in Washington, D.C. are skeptical that this is the actual deadline because the GOP accuses the White House of trying to force them to the table.