APPLIED PROCESS’S POSTHAVEN

In the Austempering business we are constantly amazed how limited the engineering community’s general knowledge of material/process selection really is.  Often, engineers make material selection based on the incumbent products or the guy with the most voluminous editorial or advertising material.  Or they can be pushed to lower density materials believing what they've heard, that low density = lightweight = green.  Ladies and gentlemen, The Stuff Matters.  I can’t blame the engineers.  Everybody’s being asked to do more with less and every engineer is expected to know everything about everything and they just can’t. 

So we found it mildly amusing when Ford announced a few months back (Automotive News August 2012) that they intend to reduce the mass of the US’ #1 selling vehicle, the Ford F-150, by 750 lb. (340kg).  The mass reduction will be accomplished by converting steel and iron components to aluminum in:

-The cargo box

-The tailgate

-The hood

-The chassis

-The suspension.

The mass reduction is expected to 1) increase the fuel efficiency of the vehicle by 8% and, 2) increase the cost of the vehicle by $3,000.  Hmmmm.  If one drives their F-150 10,000 miles (16,130 km) per year and gasoline sells for $3.50/gallon, this modification will pay for itself in 10 years.  In other words, it will be like buying $3,000 worth of gasoline IN ADVANCE.  (That energy is embodied in the aluminum that is substituted for ferrous alloys that require much less energy to extract from the earth).  It sounds green……a lighter vehicle, 8% better “fuel efficiency”…..but is it, really?  You decide.

To help engineers and buyers make better material/process decisions, Applied Process Inc. recently held its inaugural “AP University” in Livonia and Ann Arbor, Michigan.  31 attendees representing 16 companies participated in a 3-day seminar focusing on engineering conversions.  They learned how to design a casting, the metallurgy of ductile iron and Austempered Ductile Iron (ADI), solidification and 3-D modeling, machining and all aspects of converting steel and aluminum castings, forgings and weldments to ductile iron and ADI castings.  For the capstone events the attendees toured Applied Process’ Livonia facility and participated in mold making and a ductile iron pour at Joyworks Studio in Ann Arbor…..each taking home a rather snazzy looking Hostile Duck Iron, wall-mount bottle opener.

The AP University attendees asked great questions and learned much.  One attendee, an engineer with a purchasing function, working for a Tier One supplier summed it up the best: “There were things that I did not think would be (candidates) for the Austempering process…..so I would not have considered it before.  Moving forward, I can apply this knowledge to more new applications”.  THAT is the point of AP University.  Oh, by the way, one of the AP University attendees was a Ford engineer.  We hope he’s working on the F-150.

AP University could not have happened without the hard  work of Vasko Popovski, Kathy Hayrynen, Justin Lefevre, Henry Frear, Chad Kelsey, Ryan Breneman, Cindy Duman and the teams at Applied Process, AP Tech, Magmasoft and Communica.  Thanks to the lot of ya. We're growin' the pie here at Applied Process.

Energy. Green. Sustainable. Energy Independence. Carbon footprint.  Climate Change.  Greenhouse gases.

 The previous terms have been brought to you by the educational system and the media.  We’ve all heard them over, and over, and over.  So let’s have a rational discussion.  Perhaps as mere mortals we can, in fact, affect positive change.  But what IS positive change?  There is energy in everything we do, consume and utilize.  

We require energy to breath, to walk, to think and to do any function we perform.  It takes a lot of energy to heat us, cool us, feed us, water us and transport us.  We’ve heard that we need to have a smaller carbon footprint.  What the heck!? ….we ARE a carbon footprint.  All organic matter: humans, animals, plants are made of various carbon molecules and water.

 We’ve been told that CO₂ is a “greenhouse gas” that settles into our upper atmosphere and reflects heat back to the earth causing climate change.  Although millions of years ago CO₂ was higher than it is now, CO₂ content in the earth’s lower atmosphere is higher now than it is has been in thousands of years leading some to conclude that humans are to blame…..but then what’s with the much higher CO₂ millions of years ago?  Who caused that?  And what happens if CO₂  goes to zero?  What we used to learn in school is that plants take in water, carbon-based nutrients from the soil, CO₂ and sunshine to make cellulose and grow…..and give off oxygen.  If CO₂ in the earth’s atmosphere were to go to zero all plant life on earth would quickly perish, and so would we.

 At a recent Western Energy Alliance conference in Colorado author Robert Bryce, Senior Fellow at the Center for Energy Policy and Environment at the Manhattan Institute, cited statistics that world-wide energy consumption in 2010 increased 28% to the equivalent of 210 million barrels of oil per day, 87% of that from hydrocarbons (oil, coal, natural gas and their derivatives).  That’s a LOT of CO₂ being produced by burning hydrocarbons. 

 I could be a little cynical here and say that perhaps we should just plant a bunch of trees….which would grow like weeds in the CO₂-rich environment and provide additional carbon-based fuel and useful cellulosic materials.  But let’s just suppose that it’s a rational, sustainable solution that can’t POSSIBLY work.  So what’s left?  Conservation.  What is conservation?  It is doing the same amount of “stuff” with less energy or doing more stuff with the same amount of energy.  In manufacturing it’s what we call increasing productivity…..producing more with the same or less…..less man-hours, less materials, less space…..all things that embody a certain amount of energy.

 Speaking of sustainability, what about wind, solar and nuclear?  Nuclear provides clean, efficient power…..and low-level nuclear waste that must be safely stored for thousands of years.  Wind and solar power are conceived as sustainable but the reason they are so expensive is that they consume huge amounts of energy to produce the wind turbines and the solar panels.  That up-front energy cost is the barrier to entry and in some cases their lifetime energy output never equals the energy input to build and maintain the devices.  So, are these methods “sustainable”?  We hope that engineers and scientists can make them so in the future.

 Recent natural gas and oil finds in North America make the prospect of us becoming energy independent a near-term possibility.  At a recent meeting of the Kentucky Oil and Gas Association, Brian Havacivch reminded the attendees that five years ago we expected to be importing large quantities of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and we capitalized facilities in the Gulf States to receive those imports.  With the oil sands of Canada and fracking technology allowing us to reach huge fields of natural gas in the north-central and Appalachian regions of the US those facilities will be put to use soon but for EXPORTING instead of importing LNG.  The current US natural gas price of about $4/MMBTU makes the export of LNG to Europe at $10/MMBTU or Korea at $12/MMBTU very desirable to producers.  This same new upswing in, now accessible, reserves will keep the price of natural gas low for a long time going forward……but not forever.

 So, this is all very good news for the US.  We’ve got lots and lots of natural gas which produces less CO₂ than coal or oil when burned.  These reserves stand to make us energy independent.  But in the end it brings us back around to us…..we consume the energy.  We can argue about mankind’s effect on the climate but what we can agree on is that we need to continually increase our productivity and energy efficiency which, by definition, both require us to do more with less energy.

 At Applied Process Inc. we are doing our part.  As Austempering experts, a principal process of ours is Austempered Ductile Iron (ADI).  ADI, with its high strength-to-weight ratio can replace steel or aluminum castings, weldments or forgings at equal mass.  When you then add that ADI embodies far less energy per unit of mass than steel or aluminum technologies, ADI is a green alternative……and that’s just the material/process consideration.

 Applied Process Inc. is committed to continually increasing productivity.  In our fiscal year 2011 we increased our output per man-hour by nearly 11%, our output per furnace hour by nearly 6% and we reduced our energy consumption per unit sale by nearly 6%.  These improvements did not happen by accident.  They were the result of aggressive employee training, demanding internal quality systems, fervent preventive maintenance, focused capital expenditures and implementation of new technologies.  Our customers, our stakeholders and our communities expect it, and AP is delivering.