Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
    • About Us
    • Colophon
    • Survey
  • Reliability.fm
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Quality during Design
    • CMMSradio
    • Way of the Quality Warrior
    • Critical Talks
    • Asset Performance
    • Dare to Know
    • Maintenance Disrupted
    • Metal Conversations
    • The Leadership Connection
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Reliability it Matters
    • Maintenance Mavericks Podcast
    • Women in Maintenance
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • NoMTBF
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • ASQR&R
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • AI & Predictive Maintenance
      • Asset Management in the Mining Industry
      • CMMS and Maintenance Management
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • RCM Blitz®
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
      • The People Side of Maintenance
      • The Reliability Mindset
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Field Reliability Data Analysis
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability by Design
      • Reliability Competence
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
      • Reliability Knowledge
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Institute of Quality & Reliability
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • R for Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Statistical Methods for Failure-Time Data
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Glossary
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinar Sources
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • Your Courses
    • Live Courses
      • Introduction to Reliability Engineering & Accelerated Testings Course Landing Page
      • Advanced Accelerated Testing Course Landing Page
    • Integral Concepts Courses
      • Reliability Analysis Methods Course Landing Page
      • Applied Reliability Analysis Course Landing Page
      • Statistics, Hypothesis Testing, & Regression Modeling Course Landing Page
      • Measurement System Assessment Course Landing Page
      • SPC & Process Capability Course Landing Page
      • Design of Experiments Course Landing Page
    • The Manufacturing Academy Courses
      • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Statistics
      • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
      • Quality Engineering Statistics
      • FMEA in Practice
      • Process Capability Analysis course
      • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
      • Return on Investment online course
    • Industrial Metallurgist Courses
    • FMEA courses Powered by The Luminous Group
      • FMEA Introduction
      • AIAG & VDA FMEA Methodology
    • Barringer Process Reliability Introduction
      • Barringer Process Reliability Introduction Course Landing Page
    • Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Reliability Engineering for Heavy Industry
    • How to be an Online Student
    • Quondam Courses
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home
  • Upcoming Live Events
  • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
You are here: Home / Archives for Metal Conversations

Metal Conversations

Metal Conversations is a podcast by Michael Pfeifer from Industrial Metallurgists, LLC. He talks about metallurgy and metals engineering as they apply to product design and manufacturing. This covers many different areas since considerations about the metals used in products includes alloy selection, supplier selection, manufacturing process development, and fixing quality problems, just to name a few.

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 027 Metal Annealing

MC 027 Metal Annealing

Metal Annealing

in this episode, Michael Pfeifer discusses the recrystallization anneal process and confusion regarding the use of the term anneal.

To learn more about recrystallization annealing check out this video and article .

 


[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 026 Phase Diagrams

MC 026 Phase Diagrams

Phase Diagrams

Phase diagrams are graphical representations of the phases present in a particular alloy being held at a particular temperature.  Phase diagrams are used to predict the phase changes that occur in alloys during heating and cooling. This can be during heat treating, casting solidification, joining processes that involve molten metal, and elevated temperature use conditions. This is important because the properties of a metal component depend on the phases present in the metal.

In this episode Michael discusses phase diagrams and their use.

To learn more about phase diagrams check out this video and article.


[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 025 Engineering Mistakes, Causes, and Prevention

MC 025 Engineering Mistakes, Causes, and Prevention

Engineering Mistakes, Causes, and Prevention

Engineering and producing a product or structure involves many decisions and actions, and occasionally mistakes are made. Sometimes they are easy to fix and not costly. Other times the mistakes take a great deal of effort and money to fix. Regardless, the general categories of mistakes can be put into two categories – mistakes due to process or procedure errors and mistakes due to ignorance.

In this episode Michael discusses these types of mistakes, their causes, and ways to prevent them from occurring.

To learn more about check out this video and article.


[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 024 Supplier Selection

MC 024 Supplier Selection

Supplier Selection

Supplier selection involves many considerations from several different perspectives, such as design engineering, quality engineering, sourcing, finance, and shipping and logistics.

In this episode, Michael discusses supplier selection considerations based on the materials engineering perspective, with a focus on metal stock and metal components.

To learn more about supplier selection from the materials engineering perspective, check out this video and article.

 


[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 023 Component Design Process

MC 023 Component Design Process

Component Design Process

Michael discusses a high level view of the component design process from the metals engineering perspective.

To learn more about the component design process, check out this video and these articles on material selection, materials selection and design requirements, and designing optimized components.


[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 022 Product Launch Formula

MC 022 Product Launch Formula

Product Launch Formula

In this episode, Michael discusses different aspects of product development, product launch, and post-launch where materials engineering will improve product success.

Developing and launching a product can be stressful – there are many decisions, problems to overcome, and risks to mitigate. While we’d like the process to go smoothly and be able to calmly meet deadlines, this usually is not the case – things we didn’t consider pop up or things that shouldn’t have been a problem become a problem.

Many of the decisions, problems, and risks are associated with the materials used in a product. After all, a product is ultimately an assembly of materials that have been shaped, manipulated, and modified. So, making the effort to engineer the materials will have an impact on product cost, performance, and reliability,
and on manufacturing throughput and quality.

Check this video and article to learn more about successful product development, launch, and improvement.


[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 021 Residual Stress in Metals

MC 021 Residual Stress in Metals

Residual Stress in Metals

In this episode, I discuss residual stress in metals

 See this blog post on residual stress to learn more about residual stress

See this blog post on the five concepts to learn more.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 020 Five Key Metallurgy Concepts

MC 020 Five Key Metallurgy Concepts

Five Key Metallurgy Concepts

In this episode I discuss five key metallurgy concepts that apply to all metals and are necessary to understand to be able to apply metallurgy to
  • Produce stock metal
  • Design and fabricate low-cost, reliable components.
  • Figure out the root cause of component failures and production quality problems.

See this blog post on the five concepts to learn more.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 019 Two Fundamental Metallurgy Principles

MC 019 Two Fundamental Metallurgy Principles

Two Fundamental Metallurgy Principles

In this episode I discuss the two fundamental principles that are the foundation of metallurgy and metals engineering. See this blog post on two fundamental metallurgy principles to learn more.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 018 Engineering to Prevent Hydrogen Embrittlement

MC 018 Engineering to Prevent Hydrogen Embrittlement

Engineering to Prevent Hydrogen Embrittlement

In this episode I discuss the hydrogen embrittlement mechanism and the engineering steps needed to prevent hydrogen embrittlement of steel fasteners.

See our blog post on hydrogen embrittlement to learn more.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 017 Life (and Engineering) Lessons from Boxing

MC 017 Life (and Engineering) Lessons from Boxing

Life (and Engineering) Lessons from Boxing

In this episode I discuss a lesson I learned from boxing – being purposeful – and how it applies to engineering (and probably other disciplines) and other aspects of life.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. 1 Comment

MC 016 Using Failure Analysis to Improve Equipment Reliability

MC 016 Using Failure Analysis to Improve Equipment Reliability

Using Failure Analysis to Improve Equipment Reliability

In this episode I discuss another failure analysis project I worked on – an equipment reliability problem. This example demonstrates how failure analysis is applied to improve reliability.
I also discuss my motivation for working on failure analyses.

This episode is a complement to articles and podcasts available on the Industrial Metallurgists website.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 015 Definition of Successful Product

MC 015 Definition of Successful Product

Definition of Successful Product

From an engineering perspective, what is a successful product? In this episode I discuss what I think it is and the influence of metals engineering on product success.

I also discuss three new resources for learning about successful component design, designing for reliability, and various metallurgy and metals engineering topics that apply to product design and manufacturing.

Designing Optimized Components

Design for Reliability Course

Short course series: Metallurgy for Successful Products

This episode is a complement to articles and podcasts available on the Industrial Metallurgists website.

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 014 Failure Analysis Case Studies

MC 014 Failure Analysis Case Studies

Failure Analysis Case Studies

In this episode I discuss two failure analysis projects I worked on.

This episode is a complement to articles and podcasts available on the Industrial Metallurgists website.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

MC 013 Product Reliability and Materials Degradation

MC 013 Product Reliability and Materials Degradation

Product Reliability and Materials Degradation

In this episode I discuss product reliability. Reliability refers to the ability of a product to perform as needed for a period of time.
This episode is a complement to an article (Designing for Reliability) and short video presentation (Product Reliability and Materials Engineering) available on the Industrial Metallurgists website.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Metal Conversations

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »
Metal Conversations podcast logo

About metallurgy and metals engineering applied to product design and manufacturing.

photo of Michael
by Michael Pfeifer
Metals Conversations,
Hosted on Anchor
Subscribe and enjoy every episode
Google
Apple
Spotify

Recent Episodes

MC 027 Metal Annealing

MC 026 Phase Diagrams

MC 025 Engineering Mistakes, Causes, and Prevention

MC 024 Supplier Selection

MC 023 Component Design Process

MC 022 Product Launch Formula

MC 021 Residual Stress in Metals

MC 020 Five Key Metallurgy Concepts

MC 019 Two Fundamental Metallurgy Principles

MC 018 Engineering to Prevent Hydrogen Embrittlement

MC 017 Life (and Engineering) Lessons from Boxing

MC 016 Using Failure Analysis to Improve Equipment Reliability

MC 015 Definition of Successful Product

MC 014 Failure Analysis Case Studies

MC 013 Product Reliability and Materials Degradation

MC 012 Six-Sigma and Materials Engineering

MC 011 Tribute to Steel Metallurgy Knowledge

MC 010 A Different Perspective for Seeing Products

MC 009 Learning and Professional Development

MC 008 Design for Manufacturability

MC 007 Failure Analysis of Component Failures and Manufacturing Problems

MC 006 You Have to Think Small to Understand Metallurgy

MC 005 Metals Engineering Perspective to Component Design

MC 004 What is Metals Engineering?

MC 003 Lessons Learned as a Process Engineer

MC 002 How Materials Engineering Fits In

MC 001 Metal Conversations Introduction

© 2025 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy