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Week of May 16th this year, the ASTM Organization held one of their bi-annual meetings in Anaheim, CA. These meetings are held for the purpose of revising and creating specifications that have tremendous influence in all of the industries they serve. It is made up of a group of volunteers, one member per company, who are intended to represent a cross section of producers, suppliers and service organizations. Without proper representation, certain market segments such as the Investment Casting Industry might not have their interests properly represented. If that occurs, decisions might be made that have long lasting and detrimental effects to our membership.
I personally attended the meeting in Anaheim and I would like to share my experiences in an effort to demonstrate the value and power of participation.
As a voting member of the metals group A-01 and the castings group A-01.18 I receive periodic electronic notifications of active work group activities, as well as proposals for changes to existing specifications. I can review all proposed changes and may vote to accept, to accept with comment, to abstain, or to vote negative which always requires a comment.
I became aware of proposed changes to ten separate commonly used specifications called out by Investment Casting end users. Every specification change was calling for reductions in maximum allowable levels of phosphorous and sulfur, to approximately half of the current allowable levels. The proposal was seen by the committee as an opportunity to bring ASTM standards more in line with European standards, as well as a benefit to the sand casting and welding industries with particular focus on pressure vessels.
What the committee did not hear until this week, is the significant volume of raw material that our industry uses from wrought products such as steel bar and stainless plate materials which contain higher levels of S & P than they were aware of. Nor did they understand the difficulties of lowering phosphorus through the process of refining or dilution, or how expensive that might be. Also to be considered is the millions of dollars in existing melt stock and finished goods castings that might be rendered worthless and unsellable or unusable due to the chemistries becoming nonconforming. Also not considered, is the value of having some sulfur in the chemistry to aid in the machinability of some work hardening stainless steels.
I am very pleased to report that my presentation of information and my participation were both very well received and appreciated. I found the committee both open and willing to hear everyone’s position and opinions. As a result, all ten specification negatives that we discussed were found to be persuasive and P & S changes were removed from final drafts that will be forwarded to the A-01 metals membership for their renewal vote.
I am grateful to the very few members who took time to provide me with comments and data that I believe was crucial in convincing the committee. A reoccurring comment from the group was that our industry is not very well represented in the castings group.
The reality is, if we continue to not get involved, more changes may occur that may be costly and will make us less competitive in a world economy. We have enough challenges that are outside of our control, but this one we can influence!
Consider having your top “metals” person join ASTM casting group 0.18. The commitment is a few electronic ballots per year and one or two trips to their bi-annual meetings that only require a day or two of your time.
There will be more discussion and data collection performed, and probably requests for some compromise on the ten specifications discussed, but I am convinced through this very positive experience that, with your help, any changes will be ones we all can live with.
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