November/December 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 | N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 8 3 6 iTSSe TSS iTSSe TSS 2 FINDING THE ‘MAGIC PUDDING’ IN THE THERMAL SPRAY INDUSTRY I t is truly summer here in Melbourne, Australia, and one of my family’s fa- vorite things to do is to visit the local wildlife sanctuary to get acquainted with characters from the “Magic Pudding” (a 100-year-old children’s book with Aus- tralian native animals). For those who are not familiar with the story, there is a magic pudding called Albert that will always reform into a whole pudding again no matter how much was eaten. Although it is a fairy tale, it got me thinking about what is the “magic pudding” for the field of thermal spray. Will surface en- gineering and thermal spray continue to flourish and renew itself into the future? One only needs to look back at our long and rich histo- ry to realize that our “magic pudding” is passionate people. These “Alberts” have a strong passion for either finding a thermal spray solution to their engineering challenges or de- veloping new surface engineering processes or new coating microstructures to replace old methods and drive thermal spray innovations. From the days of Schoop depositing lead coatings, our thirst for advancement of thermal spray tech- nology has seen many formidable inventors and researchers. Some of these luminaries include H.S. Ingham (flame spray), J. Browning (HVOF), E. Muehlberger (LPPS), R. McPherson (mi- crostructure), and M.L. Thorpe (APS). In 2018, we bid farewell to some of these people. Rest in peace, Prof. Philip Cheang and Dr. Dongming Zhu. Building the framework to nurture more “Alberts” is important, hence the role that universities, institutes, and in- dustries have is critical. New training centers like Australia’s Training Center in Surface Engineering for Advanced Materi- als (SEAM) bring together these entities or ingredients to pro- duce the magic pudding. The new generation of surface engi- neers and advanced technologies will no doubt be a renewed source of future research discoveries, bringing thermal spray to new heights of innovation and solving future engineer- ing challenges. While coediting the upcoming issue of JTST, which is fo- cused on biomaterials, there was again a concerted effort in advancing our knowledge in coating deposition and charac- terization of these coatings. Given that themedical technology market is expected to grow at 4.5%per year, and achieve sales of $455 billion by 2018, this is certainly an important area for thermal spray researchers because coatings are employed in many medical devices and implants. As we draw close to another year, I offer you my season- al greetings and wish you and your family a happy new year. May themagic pudding in the thermal spray industry continue to grow. Andrew S.M. Ang Senior Research Engineer Swinburne University of Technology EDITORIAL Ang