LVASM Chapter Members,

Thanks to all who came out for our March meeting at the Inn at Moselem Springs. It was an honor for me to present Rick Frank with our 2008/9 Bradley Stoughton award. Rick has a profound understanding of high temperature alloys and has been a mentor to numerous employees of Carpenter Technology. Rick provided us with an excellent talk on the comparative properties and selection of superalloys.

We have only two more chapter meetings this program year. In April we will be visiting one of the largest producers of titanium in the world, TIMET, in nearby Morgantown, PA. We will get a tour of the plant then head over to the Heritage Restaurant for some grub and drinks. We will meet at TIMET at 5:50 for the tour, for directions, click on the Calendar of Events and then the April event. The Morgantown facility is the world’s largest Ti re-melting facility and the tour will include material handling systems, electron beam melters, vacuum arc re-melting and more.

For our final chapter event of the program year we will take a trip back in time in which our guest, Peter Dent, will give a presentation which will provide a context of times of the Italian renaissance and Leonardo's universal genius, 15th century casting technology, and contrast this with the methods used to build Leonardo da Vinci's Horse which, even in modern times, posed numerous unique challenges. Peter Dent is Vice President of Business Development for the Electron Energy Corporation (www.electronenergy.com) of Landisville, PA, a rare earth specialty magnet manufacturer serving the aerospace, military, medical devices, and energy technology markets. Peter is former President/CEO and Trustee of Leonardo da Vinci's Horse, Inc (www.leonardoshorse.org ) which merged with the Discovery Center of Science and Technology and is now called the Da Vinci Science Center. He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Da Vinci Science Center which opened its new 30,000 square foot, $11 million facility in October 2005 on the campus of Cedar Crest College in Allentown (www.davinci-center.org)

Thanks to everyone for all you’ve done to make us one of the best ASM chapters in the country. The reason we have had such success is the wonderful efforts of our members and Executive Committee. The committee is always looking for ways to improve and if you have any suggestions, or if you would like to take a more active role in the Chapter, please email me at rdisabella@cartech.com.