Articles
Advice & Council: Aluminum
Frank Altmayer offers this quick primer on the aluminum materials commonly found in aerospace manufacturing.
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Surface Finishing on the Pivot Orifice of an Artificial Heart Valve Ring
The chemical polishing of artificial heart valve rings and the factors influencing surface quality were investigated in this work. The optimum parameters for polishing flat specimens were determined from a fractional factorial design and a few single-factor experiments. The results indicated that a good bright surface was obtained on the valve ring through chemical polishing in the optimum solution, and the pivot orifice surface roughness (Ra) of approximately 0.2 μm could be achieved. This result also provides a simple method to obtain a smooth surface on biomedical titanium.
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Fact or Fiction: Healthier and Stronger Than Our Forebearers
Jack Dini comments on the continuing reduction in chronic ailments.
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America’s Most Wanted: Skilled Workers
Fabricators & Manufacturers Association president Gerald Shankel discusses the imperative to recruit young people with higher skills into the manufacturing workforce.
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HPLC Study on Copper Plating Chemistry
In a typical acid copper plating bath, additives, such as grain refiners, brighteners and carriers, are used to deliver a smooth, bright and hard deposit. In order to ensure high quality plating, it is helpful to have a better understanding of the behavior of these additives in the bath. In this paper, a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) study of these additives is discussed, in an attempt to answer the following questions: Do these additives exist in the solution as a complex mixture of derivatives? Are there interactions between them? Are there any decomposition species accumulated in the plating process? How can we better control the plating process? The results indicate that the brightener exists in the bath with a series of its derivatives, while the grain refiner is in a simple form. When the brightener and the grain refiner were mixed in solution, some new species, which have different retention times in HPLC, were generated. Combined with a Hull Cell study, the impacts of the new species and the concentrations of additives on the plating process were investigated. Decomposition of the plating solution was also examined.
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Money for the grabbing
Many small businesses who have been hit hard by the Obama Administration policies in the past 18 months can smile a little easier if they were on a waiting list to get a Small Business Administration loan.
Read MoreThe Cost of Regulation
One of the few nice things that Congress has done for businesses over the years is to require government agencies imposing new regulations to spell out how much time and money it will cost the company owner to comply with the new rules.
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Cure Oven Inspection Report
Terry Ray has seen nearly everything in his years inspecting e-coat paint cure ovens as a paint systems manager at KMI Systems Inc. (Crystal Lake, IL), a company that designs, builds and installs paint and porcelain finishing systems for customers such as General Electric, Whirlpool, Weber-Stephen and Maytag, among others.
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Keep on Truckin’ with the Right Coatings
The Raymond Corporation knew it wanted the latest technology available. The question was a little more complex: liquid or powder for its coating applications.
Read MoreSlaying the hard chrome dragon
In the endless pursuit for a replacement for hard chrome, Techmetals Inc. (Dayton, OH) may have a shining example of how to provide comparable corrosion performance, while also being environmentally friendly.
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Shaving the Whisker Problem
Whiskers are a problem that has plagued the plating industry for several years, and it isn’t something that a good shave and a haircut will solve. However, research is continuing to improve on ways to prevent them.
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