Advice From Experts

Concurrent Development of Products/Processes.  Many innovative products and materials have been developed in the last 50 years, but in some cases, they have not been commercialized since they could not be produced cost-effectively, or in reasonable quantities. It's important to keep this in mind when developing new materials or processes - in order to achieve success, then several items must be kept in mind: cost, cycle time, raw material availability, facilities availability, power requirements, etc. 

Direct Replacement with Ceramics Doesn't Always Work Advanced ceramics have many beneficial properties, such as a high hardness and stability at high temperatures. The drawbacks of ceramics, such as low tensile strength, must be considered when implementing them for structural applications. In many cases, replacing a metal part with a ceramic part has undesirable consequences, and consideration should be put into re-designing components to accommodate the brittle nature of the material.

Process Scale-up Can be Difficult. Lab-scale processes frequently tell us whether or not something is possible. Pilot scale or production scale-up tells us whether a process is practical. Since we build our businesses around practical and/or deployable process, it's important to consider the scale-up issues early in the R&D programs.

A System Approach Provides Better Results. When it comes to materials and/or process development, it's important to keep in mind the overall system requirements or desired functionality. Tribologists (scientists that study the wear behavior of parts) will tell you that all aspects of a system must be analyzed to determine the appropriate materials in the system, otherwise the wear shifts from one part to another which results in system failure.