In our workaday lives at the Applied Process family of companies we get paid to Austemper heat treat people’s steel and ductile iron parts. What we really do for a living is to work with customers to replace one material/process combination with a better-faster-cheaper one. The material we’re most proud of is Austempered Ductile Iron (ADI). ADI is just good metal. So when we break someone’s testing machine with a new ADI application its smiles and high-fives all over the office.
Just recently a major, international automotive manufacturing company was testing ADI against an incumbent steel forging for a critical suspension component. The forging survived an average of 300,000 cycles on a certain fatigue rig…..so that became the bogie to beat. They put the ADI component on and gave up at 1.1 million cycles. So, they raised the load and broke the testing machine. (Cha Ching!). The solution? ADI replacement parts for the testing rig! Problem solved. Hostile Duck Iron wins again!
Interesting quotation by Bob Prosen; “Great companies change before they have to”.
If you are LinkedIn, consider joining our group “ADI Mongers”. For all that’s new in Austempered Ductile Iron.