Monday, May 25, 2015

Memorial Day

It is hard to believe that MagnaTech P/M Labs has been in business for 30 years. MagnaTech started as a partnership with a company known as Windfall Products, located in St. Marys, Pennsylvania. This relationship lasted for five years, at which point Windfall was requested by General Motors to install their own laboratory and in-house metallurgist. Since then, MagnaTech has been owned and operated by Ken Moyer. During this time MagnaTech has cooperated with a large number of commercial customers to upgrade and to introduce new products. MagnaTech's most recent accomplishment was completion of a Phase II SBIR contract with the Navy to provide improved wear, corrosion, impact and fatigue resistance for hook points.
Current interests of MagnaTech include advanced manufacturing and efforts to bring new products to market that will eliminate the expensive material waste and  labor to reduce a solid billet to a part of a specified geometry. Often as little as 15 % of the material may remain after the billet has been reduced to final desired geometry. In addition,  labor cost to accomplish this reduction to size may be extremely expensive. Often processing of the material can contribute to both damage to the environment and also to the welfare and health of the workers  necessary to produce the final part. Advanced manufacturing offers the promise of reducing if not eliminating these troublesome problems . Advanced manufacturing, using either a laser or an electron beam for energy, with the assistance of a three dimensional computer design, can construct a part to size with little waste of material and reduced human labor, in a safe non-hazardous environment. The catch is that the initial cost of equipment is of the order of a million dollars. With time and demand this initial cost should be reduced to a more reasonable price range.
One area of interest that could be satisfied using this new technology is aircraft. Currently, progress is limited by the capability of present day superalloys. These alloys are expensive, and they are at their limit of capability. There are always solutions however, most at cost for material for advantage provided. Most obvious solutions require heavy, expensive, scarce refractory metals. These are unacceptable at a time where we are looking more and more for dollar value and increased return on investment. MagnaTech believes that we have solutions that will inexpensively produce improved superalloys  to deliver increased payloads faster in advanced aircraft design.
MagnaTech is a veteran owned company, totally devoted to research and consulting with our own arrangement of supporting laboratories. Should you be interested in this kind of research, MagnaTech would be delighted to work with you to resolve your problems.