SMPM Capabilities

SMPM provides metallurgical lab, conventional and CNC secondary operations, R&D/prototyping, and metrology lab capabilities.

Metallurgical Lab Capabilities

The metallurgical laboratory at SMPM is capable of doing all required testing of incoming raw material (powder) to determine conformance to ASTM & MPIF specifications. Testing includes sieve analysis, green and sintered strengths, apparent density (Arnold and Hall), flow rates, carbon contents and some chemical compositions.

Since bearing production is a core competency, we also have soxhlet apparatus for determining porosity. Both life testing and torque limit testing are available for bearings using variable speeds and loads. Metallographic analysis is available in-house for all sintered materials, and photomicrostructures can be e-mailed to customers upon request. In addition, several consulting firms are utilized for material and tooling design to supplement our in-house capacity.

Conventional Secondary Operations Capabilities

Although the P/M process provides a near net product, there are times when additional work may be required. SMPM’s extensive range of secondary operation capabilities include CNC machining, drilling, tapping, reaming, counter sink, high speed production deburring, milling, vibratory and centrifugal finishing, heat treating, steam treating, plating, resin impregnation, and oil impregnation. With this wide array of secondary operations, SMPM can provide finished products that meet exacting customer requirements.

Secondary Operations: CNC Capabilities

SMPM has both vertical and horizontal CNC machining capabilities that enable high speed production machining, achieving an increased surface finish. These capabilities also enable additional secondary machining to more stringent tolerances than those obtainable by conventional P/M processes alone. Having these capabilities in-house means SMPM can can adhere to the most exacting tolerances and can expedite customer requirements whenever the need may arise.

R&D / Prototyping Capability

SMPM’s custom engineered services and products include designing materials to meet specific applications, testing materials to provide P/M alternatives, providing slugs for material analysis or machining (or we can even machine and provide prototype parts without the tooling expense), and more. We’re experienced at converting parts to P/M, significantly reducing expense and waste by turning nearly all of the raw material into parts. This is possible because of our ability to press sophisticated geometry and maintain strict tolerances producing net shape. We can custom blend any metal powders to target your unique requirements and then provide test data to compare with established materials or construct testing equipment to closely reflect the application. Powder metallurgy makes it possible to solve application and design issues because of its flexibility to target specific customer concerns. Our Auto CAD system can provide detailed engineering drawings and our engineers can provide material data and specification conformance to help you turn your idea into metal.

Metrology Lab Capabilities

The metrology lab at SMPM is capable of measuring and quantifying anything that any customer might require. Our newest acquisition is a state-of-the-art video imaging coordinate measuring machine with resolution 5 places past the decimal. With this newest tool added to our line-up of existing video imaging equipment, optical comparators, bore gaging system, digital and conventional micrometers, gage pins and blocks, and indicators, no linear measurement is beyond our capability.

In addition to linear measurements we have a surface roughness tester, density scale, hardness tester, radial crush machine, and load cells to quantify any required property or specification. Sophisticated data collection system and advanced SPC techniques are utilized to give SMPM a very high confidence level in the accuracy of all data we generate.