You may hear the term heat treating and wonder when we use it. While heat treating can be used to clean metal and for other reasons, it's also used to harden metal. We use heat treating to harden our tooling. Heat and metal combine to provide us with the hardness, durability, and sharpness needed to blank and form your metal parts.

Hardness can bring about brittleness. That's where you'll hear the term tempering. Tempering involves heating the steel to a set temperature while sacrificing some hardness. 

You might hear the term Rockwell. Rockwell is a hardness scale. When we get steel, we get it in a set hardness that works for the blanking and forming of your metal parts.

There's one more term you might hear related to metal hardness. That's tensile strength. Tensile strength refers to the maximum stress that material can handle.

There's your beginner's guide to metal hardness. We take care of these considerations for you when we develop your part with you.

Riggers, want to find out the latest in equipment, regulations, drilling technology, and more? Check out the comprehensive upcoming trade show list on the Bishop Listing website. Plan now for these two events in October:

Brooklyn, October 18-21, 2015
Associated Wire Rope Fabricators (AWRF) Fall General Meeting
Network with wire rope manufacturers at this annual AWRF Fall Meeting, hosted in a different city each year. Register.

Louisiana, October 27-29, 2015
Lousiana Gulf Coast Oil Exposition (LAGCOE) Expo
Learn about new technologies from some of the top leaders in both onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration and production. Register.

In a time when manufacturers "perceive that China is progressively losing its attractiveness as a low-cost manufacturing location because of rapid wage escalation," Massachusetts positions itself as an attractive option for hardware startups. What puts Massachusetts on the map for manufacturing? Innovation and talent that help cut lead times and meet quality standards, according to a report released by MIT’s Industrial Performance Center. 

How is Massachusetts a leader in innovation and talent?
1. World-class research universities mean research that results in competitive, new products.
2. A talent pool from these universities creates products and improves products, services, processes, and organizational structures. 
3. The Commonwealth has a thriving startup community for new product  development.
4. There are a large number of suppliers like machine shops to manufacture custom parts on a small scale.
5. The Commonwealth has promoted manufacturing careers in community colleges and organizations and created training programs for skill development.

Source: Strengthening the Innovation Ecosystem for Advanced Manufacturing, released May 2015

Collaboration among manufacturers, start-ups, and research institutions can foster innovation in Massachusetts according to a report released by MIT’s Industrial Performance Center. What makes Massachusetts so attractive to startups looking to manufacture? According to the report: