Something to be aware of is that any transatlantic crossing was always a fast crossing. Now we have the factor of the increased vessel speed, at approximately 21 knots, becoming an influencing factor.

Busch Vacuum Solutions U.S. acquired VESCO-McLaughlin Inc. (VESCO), an industrial service company specializing in the heat-treatment and metallurgy industries. East Windsor, Conn.-based VESCO was formerly part of McLaughlin Furnace Group (MFG), a supplier of engineered vacuum solutions for thermal-processing and surface-preparation applications. MFG’s major customers operate in the aerospace, automotive, defense, energy and semiconductor fabrication industries. The addition of VESCO expands Busch Vacuum Solutions’ business by adding complementary services to its current offering.

David Pye's series on the Titanic continues with a discussion of the riveters.

Time waits for no man. Time cannot be saved. Time only moves on, even as we speak. The process temperature will determine what microscopic transformation will occur (including grain growth). Transformation is the resulting metallurgical effects of the process time and temperature selected.

It is just short of 110 years since the tragic sinking of the unsinkable ship, the RMS Titanic. During construction, some 2,000 hull plates were used along with approximately 3 million rivets to join the hull plates together.

Conduct the temperature uniformity survey (TUS) on the furnaces each week. Be sure to remember to conduct the TUS anytime that a repair has been completed on the furnace. 

Temperature uniformity within a furnace can be defined as: “a uniform temperature set to operate within a specific tolerance band to create conditions under which a final uniform resulting metallurgy will be accomplished in the treated component.”

For through-hardened steels, in order to achieve a good and true hardness result, it is necessary to test the substrate material by grinding beneath the oxide and decarburized layer.

Some of my blogs contain more metallurgy than others. Some contain well-known history. This blog is about the history and legend of the “copper mounds” of North America.

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^®.