Metal Congress

The perfect industrial metal must be stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum, heat resisting, tough. Metallurgists have not compounded it. But some 6,000 of them felt that they were approaching the goal as they listened to metallurgical discourses of the National Metal Congress held last week at Cleveland, the Foundry City.* Manganese-Molybdenum Steel. Hard and sharp were the Samurai swords of Japan, the Toledo blades of Spain, the Damascus cutlery of the Levant--because their steels contained small amounts of molybdenum. However, the presence of molybdenum was accident. Mineralogists did not recognize it as a metal until the 1790's. Metallurgists did not introduce its hardening properties to a steel alloy until very recently. Pure iron is a relatively soft metal. A little carbon added yields hard steel. Steel plus a trifle of manganese gives an alloy hard enough, when fabricated into rails, to support heavy subway traffic. If with manganese steel a bit of molybdenum is mixed, the alloyed steel is still harder. G. M. Eaton of Molybdenum Corp. of America advised railroads to use the molybdenum steel for rails. It would support the heavier locomotives and trains that U. S. transportation is requiring. X-rayed Metals. Use X-rays for detecting blowholes, pinholes, porosity, shrinks and refractory and other foreign matter in metal castings, particularly those made of aluminum, urged W. L. Fink and Robert Samuel Archer of Aluminum Co. of America's Cleveland Research Laboratories. Using the X-rays immediately after the first pours into the molds will quickly show if the "mix" is incorrect or if cores, patterns, risers or chills must be modified.

Metallic Gas. "It may be possible to run the automobile of the future on a gas of great power and volume produced by a handful of a peculiar metal and a small tank of peculiar gas." dreamily predicted Chicago's Robert G. Guthrie, nominated to succeed Cleveland's Zay Jeffries as President of the American Society for Steel Treating, sponsors of the Congress. Mr. Guthrie's prediction followed his exposition on special furnaces in which gases are used to surface steel. Metals absorb gases, a phenomenon only now being put to industrial use. Konel Metal. News of a new and valuable alloy was despatched to the Congress by Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. Erwin Foster Lowry, 38, Michigan-born Ohio State graduate, had compounded nickel, cobalt and ferrotitanium. Result was a metal which grew stronger the hotter it was heated. Other metals become weaker with heat. Mr. Lowry's alloy has a tensile strength of 60,000 lbs. per sq. in. at 600DEG C. (1112DEG F.). At the same temperature chrome nickel steel's tensile strength is 30,000 lbs. per sq. in. Name given the new material is konel metal -- from ko(balt) plus n(ick)el. Uses are for the filaments of radio vacuum tubes, turbine blades, motor pistons, valves & valve stems.*

*No longer is "the forest city" an appropriate name for industrialized Cleveland.

*Konel metal is not to be confused with monel metal, a copper-nickel alloy (plus small amounts of iron, carbon, manganese, silicon) developed in 1905. Monel metal is relatively soft, is valuable for its corrosion-resisting properties.