by Engineering Manager Gary Vangelder

Although some specifications are provided by our customers, most of the product specifications we adhere to are those published by ASTM International. ASTM International is an organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, testing methods, systems, and services. The organization’s name was the American Society for Testing and Materials before the ASTM International name was adopted in 2001. This standards organization was founded in 1898 to address needs of the railroad industry and has greatly expanded its scope since.

Although Ritchey Metals followed ASTM standards since the company was founded, our company had not participated in developing and revising the standards until I joined several committees in 2009. These committees were B02 on Nonferrous Metals and Alloys, and E01 on Analytical Chemistry for Metals, Ores, and Related Materials. These committees meet in person twice per year. I attended committee week in Atlanta Georgia shortly after joining. It was enjoyable getting together with users of our products and other producers to assure the standards we followed were maintained.

Before joining, I had assumed these standards were maintained exclusively by engineers and scientists of government and very large corporations. I quickly learned that participation by representatives of small and mid-sized companies is every bit as vital. ASTM committees would greatly welcome participation of many more companies.

ASTM requires every standard be reviewed for relevancy and accuracy on a five year basis. It then needs to be reapproved as is, revised or withdrawn. Any standard that is not acted on within eight years is automatically withdrawn. A standard can be revised or withdrawn before the five year automatic review whenever necessary. Members of a subcommittee do the review and make recommendations. A standard needs approval of the full membership of that committee before preapproval as is, a revision or a withdrawal can be taken. This can be complex at times as any negative vote by member must be resolved.

I have recently joined several other committees related to our product usage. These are A05 on Metallic-Coated Iron and Steel Product, and B08 on Metallic and Inorganic Coatings. The A05 committee standards apply mostly to hot dip plating and B08 more towards electroplating, but there is some overlap. I have also recently agreed to serve as a Member At Large on the Executive Committee of B02, and as Sub Chair of the E02:05 Analysis of Cu, Pb, Zn, Cd, Sn, Be, Precious Metals, their Alloys, and Related Metals. I expect to take on more leadership roles in the near future.

Though most of the alloys and products we currently produce were originally developed many years back, there are continuing refinements being made to improve performance as well as new alloys being developed. ASTM committees assures the standards stay current with these improvements.

A few of the new product standards in development include: a basic standard for the Zinc Aluminum Magnesium blends used to plate sheet steel, specification for high fluidity zinc die casting alloy, and specification for a creep resistant zinc die casting alloy based upon ILZRO research.

Almost all referee analytical test methods for nonferrous metals were wet chemistry based before the year 2000. These methods involved refining a sample into each element and then weighing each. Although accurate, most of these analysis took days to complete. Instrument based methods (spectrometers) have improved to the point where the results are as accurate as wet chemistry methods, but only take a fraction of the time. Instrument methods have replaced wet chemistry as referee methods in all but a few cases. Most of them are currently Inductive Coupled Plasma based.

A large drop in cost and significant advances in performance of X-Ray Fluorescent instruments in the past 20 years have made analysis using this type of instrument reliable enough that many standard techniques involving them are being developed and/or expanded. Laser-induced fluorescence is a fairly new technique where standards are beginning to be developed. Developing new analytical technique standards is a very involved process where multiple laboratories need to perform an analysis of the same sample with similar equipment and produce results consistent with each other.

The need for voluntary consensus standards in products and testing methods are critical to the future of our industry. A well-functioning ASTM will assure they are maintained.