Allomet Corporation: New Paradigms in Powdered Metals
Allomet Corporation is producing and marketing a novel family of sintered composite pseudoalloys that can be engineered to combine hardness approaching that of diamond with fracture toughness greater than tungsten carbide and weight approximately that of titanium. This exciting, totally new class of designed-microstructure particulate materials with unprecedented combinations of desirable and infinitely variable property extremes is called Tough-Coated Hard Powders (TCHP, or EternAloy®). When sintered, TCHP powders combine the highest extremes of toughness, hardness and chemical wear resistance, and light weight possible. EternAloy® wire drawing die life multiples tens of times greater than those of commercially available dies have been demonstrated under punishing operating conditions. EternAloy® cutting insert life multiples of 2–3x those of the world's top-rated inserts have been demonstrated on G-2 cast iron and alloy steels in very challenging conditions. These multiples are expected to reach 4–5x in the near future. As a thermally-applied coating, TCHPs have proven the potential to yield similar multiples in component wear resistance, enabling profound improvements in combustion engine fuel economy, noxious engine emissions, engine power per unit weight/volume, and in high-performance aerospace applications. With its patented fluidized coating technologies, Allomet can engineer and produce specialty powders—on an atom-by-atom basis—and cost-effectively produce these materials in bulk quantities. These structural control technologies promise to increase material performance—by orders of magnitude—paralleling the advances achieved with electronic devices over the past 50 years. The Company has completed initial product development, demonstrated manufacturing capabilities, and is conducting extensive field trials and increasing its own production and delivery capacity for marketing and sales and/or licensing of product applications.