Crazy story – we met Derek Shaffer in Orlando at Fabtech 2024 when he happened into our booth. He was there as a speaker to talk about his Phd research project from Penn State on additive manufacturing. Little did we know that he grew up just down the road from Imperial Systems. He now works at Ellwood National Forge, just north of us in Corry, PA. Donovan talks with him about his research and the future of manufacturing. Derek also talks about what Ellwood National Forge makes and who they make it for.
Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
Donovan: Hello, welcome to another episode of the Dusty Jobs podcast. We get to meet all types of people here at Fabtech, which is awesome and great. And we’re sitting here with Derek Shaffer, who’s a metallurgist, did I get it right?
Derek: Yes, you did.
Donovan: From the Elwood National Forge. And we’re just honored to have you. You were a speaker this year at the Fabtech, right?
Derek: Yeah, yeah, so I was actually an invited speaker at the AWS Professional Program associated with Fabtech. They bring in a lot of the welding and manufacturing stuff. I had won an international award for some of my graduate work that I had been doing at Penn State.
Donovan: That’s awesome.
Derek: They invited me to come and give a talk on that paper as well. So I’m glad to be here, glad to talk to you guys and get a little exposure for that and for the AM field and while we’re doing it, Ellwood also.
Donovan: Yeah, and that’s great ’cause we’re a Western Pennsylvania company. You guys are a Western Pennsylvania company. So it was just great to see you at our booth here and talk a little more about that. So one of the things we, when we’re at Fabtech, I mean, I’m sitting in this booth all day long. But what’s great is that they have speakers like you and you got to go actually probably sit in on a couple of other people talking too.
Derek: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Donovan: So can you tell me, ’cause I’m just getting to sit here all the time, what are a couple other topics that people could learn about when they come to Fabtech?
Derek: Oh, you can learn about lots of things. So most of the talks I sat in were part of the AWS Professional Program because I’m a welding and additive guy. But anything from, just in the additive world, you’re talking wire feedstocks, powder feedstocks, arc processes, laser processes, electron beam processes. One of the interesting themes that I saw in a couple presentations this year were welding in microgravity.
Donovan: In microgravity?
Derek: Yeah, so that way you can theoretically weld on the moon if you’re trying to assemble colonies or whatever up there, manufacturing facilities, you can send up a welder and you know what’s gonna happen.
Donovan: My guidance counselor in high school never told me that there might be welding in microgravity. I didn’t even know, so that’s gotta be some new stuff that’s like…
Derek: Yeah, it’s interesting ’cause you see kind of a trend where there’s some stuff where people were thinking about this stuff when we were first going to the moon. And then it kind of went away and now it’s starting to come back. More and more commercial space travel, the likelihood that we’re gonna start setting up manufacturing colonies, more investigation on things like the moon or Mars keeps going up and up. So the technology has to go up and up.
Donovan: So that’s awesome to me to learn more about that because it’s not just about somebody fixing a muffler anymore. There’s so much you can do if you get into welding and learn about it. Now, you, tell me more about this paper. What was your paper on? What did you get to talk on at this conference?
Derek: It’s been funny since I won the award for the paper based on a chapter of my dissertation. I tell my family and part of that was going to the International Institute of Welding Annual Assembly, which is in Greece every year. So I’m telling my family, I’m like, this is cool. And they’re like, yeah, we don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s a range of people who are like, this is a big deal. And you know, you talk to the AWS people and they’re like, this is a big deal. And then you talk to, and I talked to somebody else here today who was in welding and they’re like, yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Donovan: (laughing)
Derek: So the award is called the Henry Granjon Award. It’s a paper based award. So a bunch of people submit papers and they pick the best one. I was talking to Dr. Patricio Mendez from the University of Alberta. He’s big in the community. And any AWS person would know who you’re talking about. But he was like, oh yeah. The big thing to remember is the fact that you won that award means that some Chinese guy didn’t win that award.
Donovan: Oh.
Derek: And I was like, that’s America. Go Team USA.
Donovan: Yes.
Derek: But IW is an interesting organization because they’re all about bringing people in and disseminating information across borders and trying to bolster the technology as a whole, not just hey, US DOD is pretty advanced, but France can’t do that. So trying to level that playing field, I guess, so to speak.
Donovan: All boats rise with the tide.
Derek: All boats rise with the tide. So this paper in particular, like I said, based on a chapter in my thesis, is about the aging response of additively manufactured precipitation hardened stainless steel.
Donovan: Okay. You said a lot. And I’m gonna have to, we’re gonna have to break that down a little bit piece by piece, okay?
Derek: No problem.
Donovan: Additive manufacturing.
Derek: Yeah.
Donovan: Okay, so what’s that?
Derek: So additive manufacturing is probably the broad strokes part of this. And it encompasses a lot of things, right? So you have additive manufacturing on a tiny scale where you’re taking 10 micron sized powder particles that you spread out in a nice even bed and then you hit it with a laser and melt those particles together. And then you turn over and over and over in a layer into a shape.
Donovan: Gotcha. So it’s kind of like 3D printing.
Derek: So 3D printing is usually used as a term for like polymers, but also people call it printing when it’s melt. Like they’re pretty much interchangeable. But usually the first thing you think of when you think of 3D printer is the nice little filament plastic thing.
Donovan: Yes.
Derek: So metal people like to use the word additive manufacturing because now we can differentiate the two.
Donovan: Well, yeah, yeah.
Derek: Even though they’re not that different. So you have additive manufacturing on that scale, which was what my project used mostly, but there’s other types of additive manufacturing. You can still use a laser and powder, but now you could do things like spray the powder through nozzles at a melt hole that you make with the laser. And that goes a lot faster, but your dimensional tolerances go down. So each process has its give and take. It’s just like the difference between mig and tig welding, if you’re familiar with traditional welding, you know, it’s the difference between using a little ball peen hammer and a sludge hammer.
Donovan: Right.
Derek: Depends on the job.
Donovan: Right.
Derek: So, you know, now I work for Elwood. We deal with large custom forgings. We’re trying to make big stuff. Kind of our philosophy is bigger, better. And we need people to do that. And we need people to do that. You know, the Navy never won battles with centimeter scale battleships. So now that I’m getting into that length scale of things, it’s been interesting kind of taking what I’ve learned at these little lab scales on these little machines, looking at some of these processes that can lay down a lot more material and additive, but then also looking at the traditional and learning more of the traditional manufacturing through forging and casting.
Donovan: All right, so, okay. You’re gonna have to say it again. Your talk was on additive manufacturing, but what was the next part?
Derek: Yeah, so the next part is aging of precipitation hardened stainless steel. So aging is just a heat treatment that you do to give certain steel strength.
Donovan: Oh, okay.
Derek: The steel, the chemistry of the steel has to be designed such that something happens when you heat treat it that way. And then the precipitation hardened part essentially is the chemistry. So in these particular alloys, there’s copper in the steel. Copper doesn’t like to be in steel. So what happens is when you heat it up a little bit, the copper starts to come out as like little bubbles. It’s like when you put too much salt in your water and the salt starts to fall back out of solution. The copper starts to fall back out of solution in the steel.
Donovan: So it’s trying to get rid of it.
Derek: Yeah.
Donovan: And your process is trying to keep it in.
Derek: No.
Donovan: No, okay.
Derek: So the copper coming out is what actually gives the strength to the steel.
Donovan: Okay.
Derek: So what’s happening in additive manufacturing is we’re taking these alloys that were originally designed to be cast and rolled and forged. And we’re saying let’s atomize them and make them these little tiny powder particles and then hit them with a laser and expect the same exact response. You could tell anybody that and they would think that that’s crazy. Because it’s this big versus this big and totally different melt sizes and the whole thing. But that’s the expectation. And kind of one of our group’s themes at Penn State, I was in Dr. Palmer’s research group, one of our big themes has been, you know, we’re gonna have to start playing with these compositions. We’re gonna have to start adjusting these grades, coming up with new grades, specifically for additive. Because the translation’s just not there. So to take that back to what I was working on, what we’re seeing a lot in 17.4 in precipitation hardened stainless seals is a significant amount of nitrogen pickup and oxygen pickup in differences in manganese content and all these things. They’re influencing what phases we get. So you can think of like a 316 stainless steel. Versus like a high carbon steel. React very differently. And you’re getting that difference in what should be the same grade. So what we essentially tried to do is say, okay, well, if you end up with this behavior that you’re not supposed to get, can you bring it back to something that you want to get? So that’s, I was looking at the aging response of these different compositions and trying to essentially say, okay, well, if you have this type of composition, you’re gonna heat treat it this way. If you have this type of composition, you’re gonna heat treat it the other way.
Donovan: So you’re kinda coming up with a recipe on how to get the result of a hardening that you wanted in the steel.
Derek: Yes, exactly.
Donovan: Gotcha.
Derek: Yep. We like our recipes between the composition recipe and the heat treat recipe and the, it’s just a big cookbook over in the metallurgy world.
Donovan: You get all those dials tuned in right and you get a really good piece of steel.
Derek: Yep.
Donovan: So, okay, so you’re, – but the process you were looking at is, instead of the traditional way of doing it, you were using lasers to do it.
Derek: So that manufacturing is where the lasers come in.
Donovan: Yeah.
Derek: And that’s part of where you get that chemistry difference between the powder atomization process and then also consolidating those powders in the parts. You’ll pick up some of the cover gas, and a lot of times it’s nitrogen ’cause it’s cheap. And that nitrogen pickup and a lot of the oxygen pickup from the small powder particles, that’s what’s causing a lot of the changes in the heat treatment response.
Donovan: Right. And so you’re, you kinda helped develop the correct recipe for doing this, right?
Derek: Yep, yep. Basically we evaluated a bunch of different heats of material and we looked at a bunch of different heat treatments and we were able to figure out, okay, well, if we do this little preceding heat treatment and we up the temperature to this, how much does it change? And we’re actually kind of able to translate those pretty well.
Donovan: Okay, so what does that, for me not being in the field, not knowing 100%, what is the advantage to doing that with the laser as opposed to doing it the old way that you should do?
Derek: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So additive manufacturing in general. So the big advantage to additive manufacturing is flexibility, right? If you wanna make a part and then change something in your design and then print the next one a different way, you don’t have to change any tooling. You don’t have to do anything. You just change your drawing, shove it into the CAD program, you’re ready to go. The other thing is complexity. You see all these little complex matrix designs with all these internal features. That’s what additive, especially fat scale is really good for.
Donovan: As opposed to forging, right?
Derek: As opposed to forging. So you can think of forging, you make a block and then you have to machine your shape in. So if you have something on the inside that you wanna make something shaped on the inside, you would have to get a rolled sheet or a forging, cut it into pieces, machine the inside and then weld it back together. In this process, you make it all in one go.
Donovan: Nice.
Derek: All the internal features are already in there, all the complex features are already in there, you don’t have to weld assemblies. So one of the big examples of that and consolidating parts has been SpaceX’s recent advancements in their rocket nozzles.
Donovan: Oh yeah.
Derek: Originally was this big bulky thing and all these pieces when they were figuring out how to do it. And the more and more you work out of prototyping, you can consolidate parts because you know what needs to go where and you can print that all as one structure.
Donovan: I literally just saw the other day, there was a picture of the phase one rocket and they have the phase three gen three rocket and it is incredible. It’s like you’re looking at something that someone put together in their living room versus something that looks like it’s coming off a polished machine floor.
Derek: Exactly.
Donovan: So if anybody out there is listening or doesn’t know, like Google those two images and you will be amazed. And you’re saying that’s what additive manufacturing is helping accomplish in more and more and more different fields.
Derek: Yep, yep exactly. Yep, so additive is one of those things where like when it first started out, people are like, oh, it’ll never be more than trinkets. And it’s growing to the point where it has its applications. I do think that, you know, five years ago or something it kind of saw this peak where it was a little over hyped. Just as every new technology usually gets, we’re gonna use it for everything, 3-D print everything. We don’t need tooling. And then, you know, you kind of get this decline where people are really like, oh, it’s not good for everything. It’s not the most efficient process, but it is the most efficient process for certain things. And it is the best process for certain things. And I really think that where you’ll see additive coming a lot is for things like prepared on parts. So you can think of like, okay, we have a big cylinder like this thing behind us and something comes along and puts a big crack in it or something. Instead of scrapping that whole piece or forging a whole new bar, you could come in with additive and just fill that in and then re-machine that spot. This is also something that may sound familiar because welders have been doing this for years and years and years and years.
Donovan: Yeah.
Derek: Weld buildup, weld overlay, multi-pass welding. A lot of times it’s the same thing as additive manufacturing in the metal field.
Donovan: That makes sense.
Derek: And so a lot of what’s going on right now, as well as people figuring out where that niche is, is figuring out how to qualify pieces, especially with places like DOD and DOE who have a little higher standards and figuring out, okay, well, like what’s different compared to what we’ve been doing with traditional welding, which processes are the same exact thing and what can we kind of carry over from what we’ve learned from our decades of welding.
Donovan: Well, that’s awesome, man. So your role at Elwood though, is you’re helping take this stuff that was done on a small level and make it into a big level or are you working on other stuff there?
Derek: Well, I’m mostly working on other stuff, a little bit additive, mostly on like business development side. It’s not something that Elwood’s super familiar with yet. So part of bringing me on was, I handle a lot of large forgings for DOD applications, a lot of Navy nuclear propulsion applications. That’s kind of my main field, but they’ve also brought me on to kind of look at additive, look at opportunities to put additive different places, obviously working within a team of people who have also been looking at it in the company, but having that additive background, they tend to loop me in there, try to get my opinion. But yeah, it’s been interesting coming from additive and learning about all the traditional manufacturing and foraging and everything. It’s not something you get on a lab scale, moving up to like a 2000 or 5,000 ton press, you’re like, man, these are big.
Donovan: Yeah, I can imagine that that’s not really for a college campus, you can’t really have a giant forge there. So let’s talk a little bit about the Elwood Group and what you guys do. So if someone out there is listening and they’re saying, “Well, what would be some things you guys can help them out with?”
Derek: Oh, Elwood in general is an old company, we’re over a hundred years old. We’ve been doing high level custom forgings for that entire time. We started out in Elwood, Pennsylvania, which is a smaller town, we’re one of the biggest companies there. They then expanded to another forge house just north of there in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and have then expanded, I think it was in the 80s, they were having an issue getting high quality forging ingots. So they said, “We’re gonna make our own.” And now we have one of the, in my opinion, one of the best melt shops for high quality forging ingots. So we have electric arc furnaces, degassing furnaces, and then we have all of our remelt facilities. We’re actually getting a vacuum induction melting setup also. So our melt shop is one of the higher tech business units. They do great stuff. And if you need forging material, definitely reach out to Elwood Quality Steels, they’ll hook you up. On the forging side, we then have many forging options. We have open die presses at our facility at Elwood National Forge in Corry, Pennsylvania. We have at New Castle, just across the wall from the melt shop is a forging shop. They have bigger presses, 3500 ton and 5000 ton. They also are partners with Scot Forge at North American Forge Masters, where we have the largest open die forging press in North America.
Donovan: Wow.
Derek: And that’s where we make things like chipshafts.
Donovan: So you guys aren’t just, you make parts for other forges, plus you’re doing a lot of forging on your own too, correct?
Derek: Yeah, we primarily make, we’ll make forging stock for other forgers to use. But then we’re also doing the forges ourselves. We’ll take things, split it from the melt to the rough machine state. So almost all of our Navy new components are rough machine components to a shape that started in a melt shop two hours away.
Donovan: That’s awesome.
Derek: Yeah, so it’s really great to see things go from some scrap chips to something that’s going in a submarine. And we don’t just do things at that high level though too. We do a lot of oil and gas, we do a lot of aerospace. Down in Texas, we have closed die forging and cladding opportunities also. So we really run the gambit in terms of forging and melting.
Donovan: Well, it sounds like if it has forges in the name, you guys are in it.
Derek: That’s pretty much it. If you think you can forge it, we can probably forge it. Or we know somebody else who can help.
Donovan: You know a guy.
Derek: Yeah, yep. My boss always says, there’s an Elwood for that.
Donovan: Yeah.
(laughing)
Derek: So, yeah, it’s been a great company to start my career in for sure.
Donovan: Yeah.
Derek: Get my feet under me and learn a lot and meet a lot of people and figure out how the industry works.
Donovan: I’m just so glad that we ran into you here. A couple people from Western Pennsylvania trying to help build things for Americans in America. And just so glad, it sounds like the work you’re doing and the knowledge you have. I’m like smarter for sitting beside you, I think. So I just really appreciate you giving us a couple minutes to talk about everything you got going on. And looking forward to maybe seeing you again next year?
Derek: Yeah, hopefully.
Donovan: Okay, yeah, bring some of your friends.
Derek: I’ll try.
Donovan: All right.
Derek: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Donovan: Yeah, so that’s great.
Derek: Absolutely.
Donovan: Well, thanks for coming.
Derek: Thanks for having me.
Donovan: Check out Elwood Forge. You can just Google them up. You’ll find all the information there if you guys need anything about that.
Derek: We all have websites. Main company, all the business units, you’ll find them.
Donovan: Yeah. So probably, is your paper anywhere? If anybody’s really interested in reading something like that?
Derek: It should be published whenever the reviewers get around to reading it.
Donovan: Okay.
Derek: That’s always the challenge.
(laughing)
Donovan: For all my published papers, I know. No, I don’t even have anything published at all. But thanks so much for sharing what you have. Like I said, it’s a great amount of knowledge, and everyone who gets a chance to talk here, or listen to this will probably just really appreciate it. So check us out on YouTube, social media, Facebook, all those things, guys. And until next time, stay healthy and stay safe.
Derek: Thank you.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
