What are some of the most significant ways that HTS is working to meet the needs of heat treaters? At the 2007 ASM Heat Treating Society Conference & Exposition in Detroit, HTS President Dr. Richard D. Sisson, Jr., FASM, of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, described his priorities for the next two years.

Lifelong Learning is one of the most important Strategic Issues for ASM and HTS members. Some of the issues we will explore include:

Improvement of ASM/HT courses and creating new ones

I’m looking forward to continuing to work with the ASM Education staff to review and update our heat treating courses. But I also believe there are plenty of opportunities for new courses. For example, we are working with Lynn Ferguson of the Cleveland Chapter on courses like “Heat Treating for the Non-Heat Treater,” sort of a Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist for HTS members.

Another area that holds potential for us is Heat Treating Materials for Biomedical Applications. ASM has entered areas of emerging technologies, such as their successful entry into Materials for Medical Devices. Why not develop a course on heat treating those materials – like nitinol – to bring the basics of heat treating to a medical device audience?

We would pursue this by finding a champion among our heat treaters and adjunct faculty – a heat treater who speaks fluent medical devices, or a medical device engineer who understand materials and heat treating processes.

I also see an opportunity for a course that reflects recent advances in steel cleaning. It’s a growing issue for heat treaters and for everyone who works with steel. There are new types of techniques that should be talked about -- particularly as environmental issues continue to affect heat treating.

Development of HTS regional events that focus on exciting new and green technologies

These programs do more than fill the gap between Heat Treating Society Conference events every two years…

Our regional programs put important heat treating developments in front of the heat treating community on a timely and more geographically convenient basis.

We did a regional a year ago on vacuum carburizing and gas quenching that attracted 120 attendees and exceeded our expectations on the bottom line.

We work closely with ASM staff to make these regionals work. We develop proposals and rework them until they make the most sense for HTS and our membership, and then we move forward.

For example, we’re looking at holding regionals in locations including Mexico, Orlando, Milwaukee and my hometown of Worcester, Mass.

We’re very excited about the potential of these regionals for bringing important technical developments to the HTS membership.

I also want to add my appreciation to the organizers of this year’s HTS Conference:

Dan Herring, Scott Mackenzie and Dan Williams (pictured, from left) – for their efforts in developing our program here in Detroit – another excellent and diverse technical experience for the membership.

Fully understanding the capabilities of our new HTS Global Community Website

HTS Web Committee:

Roger Jones, Solar Atmospheres Inc. (standing); Steve Kowalski, Kowalski Heat Treating;
Fred Specht, Ajax TOCCO Magnethermic; Terry Brown, Bodycote Thermal Processing.

We want to be able to fully exploit the capabilities of our new website, particularly by developing more web-based events and value-added services for our members.

Webinars, web-based courses, “Podcasts,” virtual conferences. We want to understand the full capabilities of our new ASM/HTS community.

This is where we can fully leverage the benefits of being an Affiliate Society of ASM International. The investments made in developing the ASM community are resulting in exciting new online capabilities for our HTS membership.

For information, for networking, for problem solving and for interaction, our HTS Global Community will play a significant role in the daily work life of our membership.

Let’s look back for a moment on my first point – about reviewing our heat treating course materials and bringing them up to speed. What if we took all those printed gray notebooks, and instead we put the whole thing up on the Website with streaming video? In other words, what if we re-did the courses in an online format?

I think the opportunity to bring HTS education to a wider audience is right there. It’s all about using the new technology we have to benefit our membership.

I want to thank the HTS Web Committee for their work in building the site, the ASM staff for taking that input and creating the site, and the ASM Board of Trustees for their investment in creating the infrastructure that has made the HTS site a reality.

Through our site, we can create a larger, more “engaged” online community of users…another way to bring HTS members together, and to attract new members to the Heat Treating Society.

And with all the members of the Heat Treating Society Board, I look forward to seeing all of you in September 2009, when we meet in Indianapolis for the 25th HTS Conference & Exposition, which will be co-located with the American Gear Manufacturers Association.

As President of HTS, I look forward to working with our volunteer leaders, our committees and our membership to make HTS a more vital resource for the worldwide heat treating community.