FEATURE ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2025 36 HEAT TREAT RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE UPDATE Greetings fellow heat treaters! As the current chair of the ASM-HTS Research and Development Committee, I have the pleasure of updating you on our current initiatives. In keeping with ASM’s strategic objective to be the leading resource for the global materials community, this committee’s mission is to encourage and promote heat treating research that addresses current, real-world heat treating technology solutions and innovations needed by the ASM-HTS membership. The output of our efforts is then made available through the magazine, HTS website, and HTS sponsored conferences. We have currently organized our committee into four work groups. Heat Treat R&D Roadmap. By far this is the most ambitious effort of the committee, in that they are capturing and documenting, in significant detail, the current state of the art for the following key heat-treating technologies: modeling and simulation, heat generation methods, sensors and automation, advanced materials, nondestructive evaluation, end product quality and performance, and laser technology (this topic may not be included until a later edition). For each of these technologies, the team is also identifying the challenges and limitations facing heat treat process providers. These challenges and limitations will then represent the “voice of the customer” oppor- tunities for research and development at universities, national labs, and equipment manufacturers. It is our intention that after the initial release, the R&D committee will publish annual or biannual updates going forward. Heat Treating Articles for AM&P magazine. This team’s mission is to provide technical support and content reviews to the publishing team at ASM. They also leverage their networks to identify and recruit candidate papers for publication. A key challenge for this group is to ensure that the presented research work is relevant to the current technology and process quality needs of the HTS membership, while at the same time avoiding publishing material that is simply direct marketing or focused on technology with no current practical commercial value. ASM/HTS Prime Industry Contributor Recognition. In 2017, ASM’s Heat Treating Society R&D Committee established a new annual recognition for the best industry produced papers in the heat treat industry. Papers are judged on several criteria, including industrial relevance, experimental methods, new technology, and writing GUEST EDITORIAL clarity. The aim of the honor is to recognize outstanding industry-focused manuscripts and to encourage submissions to the magazine and the ASM Heat Treat and related conferences. Active Global Heat Treat Research Inventory. The work group for this initiative is developing a process to catalog and share with the HTS membership, an inventory of active heat-treating research taking place at universities, national labs, and research institutes. It is anticipated that by highlighting “what” is being studied “where” and by “whom,” the ASM-HTS membership will gain these advantages: • Increased awareness of developing and emerging heat treat technologies to help members remain cost effective and competitive. • Provide members with contact information, enabling them to connect with researchers and experts in their areas of interest. • Enable universities, national labs, and research institutions to attract industry partners, by increasing awareness of their heat treat technology focus and capabilities. “Mike’s Corner.” Just for fun we have added a new feature at the start of our monthly meetings called “Mike’s Corner,” so named to honor our immediate past chair, Mike Pershing. Each month, we ask a member of the committee to share a personal story of adventure and challenge in the wild world of heat treating. Stories discussed to date include: • Puzzling temperature sensing practices between shops in China and the Czech Republic. • The cost of not realizing that retained austenite in 52100 is only detectable by XRD. • The impact of “fireballs” on the solution annealing of H13 tool steel. • The honor and privilege of having worked with George Pfaffmann, a renowned innovator in the field of induction heat treating. • Why overheating forging billets to the point of massive grain growth and incipient grain boundary melting is a really bad idea. • The cost effectiveness and quality impact of robots on flame hardening. In closing, I would like to encourage anyone who might be interested in joining this committee to contact me at steve.e.ferdon@cummins.com. Steven E. Ferdon Director Materials Science and Engineering Components Business, Cummins Inc. ASM-HTS R&D Committee Chair 2 Ferdon
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