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October 31, 2024

Heat Treat Today is privileged to oversee the 40 Under 40 recognition awards highlighting a group of rising young leaders in the North American heat treat industry every year. The Class of 2024 is a high-achieving, motivated, and heart-felt group of significant contributors to the heat treat market. Here are two highlights from this year’s class.  

Lawrence Marlow is a materials engineer II at Detroit Diesel Corporation, whose experience, particularly in induction heat treatment and vacuum carburizing heat treatment, is paired with an ability to operate independently and produce outstanding results for clients. The following scenario captures his expertise when problem-solving for a client: When creating a process for induction heat treating a cast iron cam shaft, Lawrence ran into a problem with not meeting a client’s specification for allowable amounts of retained austenite. He attempted to decrease the amount that was being achieved, but after several attempts he realized it may be a flaw in the design. He consulted a design engineer and realized he needed to prove that a design change was required. So, he calculated the time it was taking to get into quench (which was well within the time to complete full transformation into martensite). Using a TTT diagram, he derived a longer duration to get to quench that would still result in full martensitic transformation. Using the limits of the machine’s travel speed, he calculated a new positioning of the quench block. Then, Lawrence manufactured a quench set up at this distance and ran the program with the appropriate settings. The resulting microstructure contained 60% less retained austenite and met the print specification with a large tolerance left. The quench system underwent redesign with his parameters as print requirements. Read more about Lawrence here.

Lexi Springer is a materials and quality engineer at Advanced Heat Treat Corp. She majored in Materials Engineering at Iowa State University with a focus on metals and polymers and was selected as an undergraduate research assistant, performing tests to investigate material properties related to the processing of additive manufactured materials and executing research plans in accordance to ASTM standards. She began her career as a materials engineer at John Deere in 2020, later joining the team at Advanced Heat Treat in 2021. While Lexi has knowledge of all the company’s heat treat offerings, her intimate understanding of processes like ferritic nitrocarburizing, gas nitriding, and ion nitriding allows her to excel in communications with clients. She manages members of the company's Monroe lab team remotely and contributes to quality and metallurgy improvements for all four Advanced Heat Treat locations. She is very helpful when explaining things and helping educate coworkers in terms that will help them understand the process, demonstrating the qualities of a great leader and how to keep her team uplifted and to feel heard. Lexi is already leading the pack, involved in numerous professional organizations, contributing to the industry as a conference speaker and award-winning writer, and earning multiple certifications. She has a passion for giving back, particularly in the growth of career pathways of women in engineering. Read more about Lexi here.

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