July/August_AMP_Digital

A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 1 8 8 METALS | POLYMERS | CERAMICS In May, Novelis Inc., Atlanta, broke ground on a $300 million automotive aluminum sheet manufacturing plant in Guthrie, Ky. The 400,000-sq-ft facility will create 125 jobs and produce annual nameplate capacity of 200,000 metric tons. Novelis will begin production at the site in 2020. novelis.com . Grammer AG, Germany, a global supplier of interior components for passenger cars and commercial vehicle seating systems, will acquire Toledo Molding & Die Inc. (TMD), Toledo, Ohio. TMD develops and pro- duces thermoplastic interior components for the North American auto- motive market. grammer.com , tmdinc.com . BRIEFS glass,” says Bastian Rapp of KIT’s Insti- tute of Microstructure Technology. To fabricate high-performance lenses for smartphones and other products, the scientists produce a glassomer rod, from which the lenses are cut. For high- ly pure quartz glass, the polymers in the composite must be removed. To do so, lenses are heated in a furnace at 500-600°C and the polymer is burned fully to CO 2 . To close the result- ing gaps in the material, lenses are sin- tered at 1300°C. During this process, the remaining glass particles are densified to pore-free glass. The new forming technology en- ables production of highly pure glass materials for any application. This pres- ents new opportunities for glass pro- cessing as well as the optical industry, microelectronics, biotechnology, and medical engineering. A spinoff compa- ny is now planning to commercialize glassomer. kit.edu . SAFER ALLOY FOR NUCLEAR POWER Researchers at the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Tenn., recently developed a safer clad- ding for nuclear fuel rods. The new material, an alloy of iron, chromium, and aluminum, avoids zirconium. As a result, it could give plant operators substantially more time to react to incidents such as a station blackout. ORNL researchers were tasked with cre- ating a zirconium-free alloy that would generate as little hydrogen as possible Glassomer can be milled, turned, lasered, or processed in CNCmachines just like a conventional polymer. Courtesy of Markus Breig/KIT. GLASSOMERS: POLYMERS PROCESSED LIKE GLASS Scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, devel- oped a forming technology to structure quartz glass like a polymer. The team mixes glass particles 40 nm in size with a liquid polymer, shapes the mixture like a sponge cake, and hardens it by heating or light exposure. The result- ing solid consists of glass particles in a matrix at a ratio of 60 to 40 vol%. The polymers act like a bonding agent that retains the glass particles at the right lo- cations and thus maintains the shape. This glassomer can be milled, turned, laser machined, or processed in CNC machines just like a conventional polymer. “The entire range of polymer forming technologies is now open for Kobe Steel, Japan, will make capital investments of roughly 50 billion yen ($465.5 million) at its Kakogawa Works. The focus will be a new continuous annealing line for steel sheet in response to growing demand for automotive ultra high-strength steel. The new facility will begin production in February 2021. www.kobelco.co.jp .