Metal Annealing
Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Author of Metals Engineering and Product Reliability articles and Metal Conversations podcast.
This author's archive lists contributions of articles and episodes.
Iām a metallurgical engineer with over 25 years of experience working on product design, quality improvement, failure analysis, and root cause analysis.
Many people think of metallurgists only for failure analysis of component failures. While I do that, I also help design teams with component design. I help select alloys and coatings that have the corrosion, fatigue, wear, and creep properties needed to meet reliability requirements. Oftentimes, trade-offs are required between component form and materials to optimize a design for performance, reliability, and cost. I help do that, too.
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
Phase diagrams are graphical representations of the phases present in a particular alloy being held at a particular temperature.Ā Phase diagrams are used to predict the phase changes that occur in alloys during heating and cooling. This can be during heat treating, casting solidification, joining processes that involve molten metal, and elevated temperature use conditions. This is important because the properties of a metal component depend on the phases present in the metal.
In this episode Michael discusses phase diagrams and their use.
To learn more about phase diagrams check out this video and article.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb5M-rgqxiU
https://www.imetllc.com/alloy-phase-diagram/
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
Engineering and producing a product or structure involves many decisions and actions, and occasionally mistakes are made. Sometimes they are easy to fix and not costly. Other times the mistakes take a great deal of effort and money to fix. Regardless, the general categories of mistakes can be put into two categories ā mistakes due to process or procedure errors and mistakes due to ignorance.
In this episode Michael discusses these types of mistakes, their causes, and ways to prevent them from occurring.
To learn more about check out this video and article.
https://www.youtu.be/3lCGI-Oav7o
https://www.imetllc.com/engineering-mistakes-causes-and-prevention/
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
Supplier selection involves many considerations from several different perspectives, such as design engineering, quality engineering, sourcing, finance, and shipping and logistics.
In this episode Michael discusses supplier selection considerations based on the materials engineering perspective, with a focus on metal stock and metal components.
To learn more about the supplier selection from the materials engineering perspective check out this video and article.
https://www.imetllc.com/supplier-selection/
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
To learn more about the component design process, check out these resources:
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
In this episode, Michael discusses different aspects of product development, product launch, and post-launch where materials engineering will improve product success.
Developing and launching a product can be stressful ā there are many decisions, problems to overcome, and risks to mitigate. While weād like the process to go smoothly and be able to calmly meet deadlines, this usually is not the case ā things we didnāt consider pop up or things that shouldnāt have been a problem become a problem.
Many of the decisions, problems, and risks are associated with the materials used in a product. After all, a product is ultimately an assembly of materials that have been shaped, manipulated, and modified. So, making the effort to engineer the materials will have an impact on product cost, performance, and reliability,
and on manufacturing throughput and quality.
To learn more about successful product development, launch, and improvement check these out
https://www.imetllc.com/product-launch-formula/
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
Ā See this blog post on residual stress to learn more about residual stress
See this blog post on the five concepts to learn more https://www.imetllc.com/residual-stress-in-metals/
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
See this blog post on the five concepts to learn more https://www.imetllc.com/five-key-metallurgy-concepts/
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
See our blog post on hydrogen embrittlement to learn more https://www.imetllc.com/steel-hydrogen-embrittlement/
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. 1 Comment
This episode is a complement to articles and podcasts available on the Industrial Metallurgists website https://www.imetllc.com/.
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
From an engineering perspective, what is a successful product? In this episode I discuss what I think it is and the influence of metals engineering on product success.
I also discuss three new resources for learning about successful component design, designing for reliability, and various metallurgy and metals engineering topics that apply to product design and manufacturing.
This episode is a complement to articles and podcasts available on the Industrial Metallurgists website https://www.imetllc.com/.
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment
This episode is a complement to articles and podcasts available on the Industrial Metallurgists website https://www.imetllc.com/.
by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment