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Application Spotlight: Light-duty ring in an air vent nozzle

Explore how a light-duty Spirolox^® retaining ring is used in an airplane air vent nozzle to regulate airflow. This application spotlight shows how the ring fits into a groove in the plastic housing, securing the nozzle during rotation. Designed for light loads and axial positioning, it offers a simple, economical solution that is easy to install and remove.
View this informative Smalley video.

Fasteners for automotive and agricultural equipment

Norm Fasteners has acquired an automotive fastener manufacturing plant in Plymouth, MI, expanding its North American footprint beyond sales, engineering, and logistics. The local facility produces metric fasteners (M4-M24) and engine bolts. Norm’s portfolio includes wheel bolts, studs, custom fasteners, and licensed MAThread^® and TAPTITE^® products, serving diverse automotive and industrial assembly needs.
Learn more or contact Belgin Tunce for more information.

3M Cooling Film for vehicle roofs launched

New 3M Cooling Film is a roof-applied heat-management solution designed to help keep vehicle cabins cooler, reduce cooling demand, and improve operational efficiency. The aftermarket product uses advanced thermal management technology to reflect more than 85% of solar radiation. Interior vehicle temperatures can be reduced by up to 10 degrees F with this product. Installs like graphics by professional installers using 3M adhesive technologies. Initially designed for fleet and rail operators.
Learn more.

Test your knowledge: High-temp adhesives

Put your knowledge to the test by trying to answer these key questions on how to choose the right high-temperature-resistant adhesive. The technical experts from Master Bond cover critical information necessary for the selection process, including questions on glass transition temperature and service temperature range. Some of the answers may surprise even the savviest of engineers.
Take the quiz.

New Air Holster Safety Air Gun Mount

EXAIR's new Model 5930 Air Holster provides a simple and convenient way to keep Safety Air Guns secure and within easy reach at workstations throughout a facility. Designed to give operators a designated location for their air gun when not in use, the Air Holster helps prevent misplaced tools while keeping work areas organized and efficient. Its practical design makes it an ideal addition to manufacturing, assembly, maintenance, and other industrial workstations where Safety Air Guns are frequently used.
Learn more.

Southco access hardware in rail applications

Discover how Southco's rail access hardware solutions help improve safety, reliability, and operational efficiency across modern rail networks. The video showcases a range of rail applications where Southco's access hardware plays a critical role, including driver cabins, lighting systems, tray tables, headrests, armrests, and other passenger and operator touchpoints. Designed to support dependable performance in demanding moving environments, Southco's solutions help operators streamline maintenance processes, minimize downtime, and enable more proactive asset management.
View the video.

Multi-zone tension leveler for hard-to-flatten alloys

Redex USA's Levelflex^® is a modular, multi-zone tension leveler engineered for continuous processing lines, including coating and heat treatment of aluminum alloys and where flatness is critical to coating adhesion and downstream formability. By stretching material within 95% of its yield strength, it corrects stubborn flatness defects in fewer passes. It comes in open-loop pure stretch or closed-loop tension measurement modes to optimize surface integrity and eliminate crossbow.
Learn more.

Hold any shape with ID and OD Form Holding Clamps

These simple OD and ID clamping solutions from Fixtureworks clamp onto your part in one easy operation, eliminating the need for custom fixtures. They allow users to clamp onto the inner or outer diameter of small-size, irregularly shaped work parts fast. Lots of options.
Learn more.

Need inserts? We make it E-Z.

Founded in 1956, E-Z LOK allows users to repair damaged or worn-out threads without the need for special taps or installation tools. Our line of threaded locking inserts is used in metal, plastic, wood, composite, and additive industries. Extensive inventories are maintained in four warehouses across the U.S., and all products are sold through industrial distributors. One source for all your needs!
Learn more
or contact Kyle Lindsly-Roach for free samples at 310.323.5613 x221.

Stop paying the 'assembly tax': Why your next design should be one part not 10

"As metal additive manufacturing (AM) moves from the prototyping lab to mainline production, the most significant ROI isn't found in making parts faster, it's found in making fewer of them." So says Erica Manzella of Go Engineer. Learn about the hidden costs of traditional assembly, the DfAM toolset native to SOLIDWORKS, and the advanced 3DEXPERIENCE optimization tools and industrial metal AM hardware that are making monolithic design a physical reality.
Read the GoEngineer blog.

Best-seller: Copper filament for 3D printing

Virtual Foundry, the company that brought us 3D-printable lunar regolith simulant, says Copper Filamet™ (not a typo) is its best-selling metal filament. This material is compatible with any open-architecture FDM/FFF 3D printer. After sintering, final parts are 100% pure copper. The company says this is one of the easiest materials to print and sinter. Stainless steel, porcelain, aluminum, and titanium available too.
Learn more and get all the specs.

What can replace a coil spring? You've got better options!

Traditional coil springs can limit mechanical designs. Wave springs offer a space-saving alternative, providing equivalent force and deflection in up to half the operating height while reducing assembly size and weight. There are four wave spring types that can replace a coil spring. Learn how each variant delivers unique performance capabilities to optimize space, efficiency, and reliability.
Read this informative NEW Smalley technical article.

Next-gen metal bonding: 3M Scotch-Weld 8500 Series

Replace traditional fasteners and streamline assembly with 3M Scotch-Weld Acrylic Adhesive DP8507NS. Engineered for direct bonding to bare or slightly oily metals with minimal surface prep, this high-performance adhesive withstands paint bake cycles up to 200 C (392 F), resists corrosion, and holds strong down to -40 C. Upgrade durability, aesthetics, and design flexibility. Bonds many plastics too!
View the video.

3 things you need to get right when 3D printing gears

When businesses decide to 3D print their own gears, they can reduce lead times and costs associated with replacements, prototypes, and small-batch production runs significantly. According to the experts at igus, however, "achieving industrial-grade reliability requires more than just a digital file; there are several fundamental technical basics you must master first to ensure your gears can withstand the rigors of real-world use."
Read this informative igus tech tip.

DURACON polymer with 30% recycled content

Daicel Corporation's High Performance Polymers SBU has launched four new DURACON^® POM grades featuring 30% post-consumer recycled (PCR) content. Unveiled at CHINAPLAS 2026, the lineup includes Standard, Low VOC, Sliding, and Tough options. Leveraging advanced compounding expertise, Daicel maintains quality and mechanical performance comparable to standard virgin resin grades for demanding global industrial and automotive components.
Learn more.

Super steel project claims big breakthrough: Super strength and enhanced fracture resistance

Professor Huang Mingxin and PhD student Miss Liu Li with their new D&P super steel, which reaches an unprecedented high level of fracture resistance and excellent performance in ductility and strength. [Credit: ©The University of Hong Kong]

 

 

 

 

The Super Steel project led by Professor Huang Mingxin at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), with collaborators at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), has made an important breakthrough in its new super D&P steel project by demonstrating greatly enhanced fracture resistance while maintaining super strength for advanced industrial applications. The material is called D&P steel because it is produced using a new "deformed and partitioned method." The steel is not the same as DP (dual-phase) steel.

The findings were published in Science on May 8, 2020, in the paper titled, "Making Ultrastrong Steel Tough by Grain-Boundary Delamination."*

Steel is a common alloy. Material scientists and engineers are continually seeking to develop next-generation steel materials that are easier to extend and elongate (ductility) into different forms and structures, higher in resistance to deformation (strength) and fracture (toughness), light in weight, and low in production cost.

The task has been difficult. The conventional view is that raising the performance of one metallic property, whether in strength, ductility, or toughness, will undermine one or more of the others. For example, an increase in strength will inevitably make the metal more brittle (known as the strength-toughness tradeoff) or less flexible to be extended or elongated into different shapes (strength-ductility tradeoff).

"In this latest breakthrough in super D&P steel, we attained an unprecedented strength-toughness combination which can address a major challenge in safety-critical industrial applications -- to attain an ultra-high fracture toughness so as to prevent catastrophic premature fracture of structural materials," said Huang. "The breakthrough also changes the conventional view that attaining high strength will be at the expense of deteriorating toughness, which invariably leads to the embrittlement of structural materials and greatly limits their application."

Earlier, the team had raised the D&P steel's strength-ductility performance significantly, so now the super D&P steel attains excellent performance in all three metallic properties at an unprecedented level.

Several patents in United States, EU, and China have been filed. The team has been liaising with industrial partners to generate prototypes of a high-strength bridge cable, bulletproof vest, and a car spring with the super steel for further testing.

The latest advancement in D&P steel, made in collaboration with Professor Robert O. Ritchie's research team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) and UC Berkeley, results in a steel with a yield strength resistance against deformation of ~2GPa, a superior fracture toughness of 102 MPa · m½, and a good uniform elongation of 19 percent (Fig. A and Fig. B).

Currently, high-strength steel for bridge cables has a yield strength lower than 1.7 GPa and a fracture toughness lower than 65 MPa · m½; high-strength armored steel used in armored cars has a similar maximum strength/toughness combination. The toughness level that can be attained by the D&P steel is much higher than that of existing steel materials, while it maintains its super strength.

Steel piano wire, for instance, has a high strength ranging from 2.6 to 2.9 GPa to resist deformation and to keep the instrument in tune, but this is achieved at the expense of toughness. In turn, it is very brittle.

(A) Yield strength-toughness and (B) yield strength-uniform elongation of the present breakthrough D&P steel compared with other existing high-strength metallic materials. D&P steel demonstrated the best combination of yield strength, toughness, and uniform elongation. [Credit: ©The University of Hong Kong]

 

 

 

 

The team has also made an important scientific discovery in the structure of the super D&P steel. The super steel has a unique fracture feature in which multiple micro-cracks are formed below the main fracture surface through a novel "high-strength-induced multi-delamination" toughening mechanism. These micro-cracks can effectively absorb energy from externally applied forces, resulting in the steel's much higher toughness resistance compared to existing steel materials.

Meanwhile, the cost of raw materials of the D&P steel is only 20 percent of the maraging steel currently used in aerospace (e.g., Grade 300, whose yield strength and fracture initiation toughness are 1.8 GPa and 70 MPa · m½, respectively).

"D&P steel has other advantages such as simple industrial processing and low raw materials cost," said Li Liu, the first author of the journal article and a PhD student supervised by Huang. "It can be produced by conventional rolling and annealing processes. As such, no complex fabrication routes and special equipment are required."

"We have made a big step closer to industrializing the novel super steel. It demonstrates a great potential to be used in various applications including superior bulletproof vests, bridge cables, lightweight automobile and military vehicles, aerospace, and high-strength bolts and nuts in the construction industry," said Huang.

*Editor's Note: Please see the referenced paper for the technical description and steel "recipe."

Source: The University of Hong Kong

Published May 2020

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