From the Web: An arm’s value; bent & twisted artwork; sourcing materials; making 3-D affordable

Familiar with the old saying: It’s worth an arm and a leg? Just how much do you think that is? Turns out, it depends on where you work.

A recent article on rawstory.com shed light on this topic as it profiled two individuals, Jeremy Lewis and Josh Potter, who had much in common—in their 20s, each married with two children, and each with tattoos of their children’s names. Both also worked at Southern industrial plants and each lost a portion of his left arm in a machinery accident.

One received $45,000 in workers’ compensation; the other was awarded benefits that could surpass $740,000 over his lifetime.

Why such disparity? “Lewis lived and worked in Alabama, which has the nation’s lowest workers’ comp benefits for amputations. Potter had the comparative good fortune of losing his arm across the border in Georgia, which is far more generous when it comes to such catastrophic injuries.”

An intact metalworker, 47-year-old David Gay from Mille Lacs, Minn., a car restorer by trade, is augmenting his passion for working with metal by starting a business of his own—Bent and Twisted Works of Art.

Using a newly purchased plasma cam cutting machine, Gay takes both copyrighted stencils and prototypes he’s created himself to produce cut-outs in metal for various purposes. Some are made to adorn home doors or windows. Some look well as wall hangings. Some are mounted in back windows of pickup trucks, or tops of end tables, or become business signs. Other uses include picture frames and garden accessories.

In the works is a portable tool chest Gay has fabricated with his metal cutting machine, which showcases several Gay original features. “I can’t let anyone take a picture of that chest yet, because I am still working out the kinks and getting patent paperwork in order,” Gay said. “But I think it has potential.”

When do strengths become weaknesses? Apparently, for China, the time is nigh.

According to an article on nytimes.com, China’s exports of steel are soaring, but that is not a god sign for its economy. The country has far more steel mills than it needs, “a problem made worse by the country’s shrinking housing market, the most voracious consumer of the metal. Companies have scaled back or closed, as domestic steel prices have collapsed.

“With scant demand at home, the remaining mills have looked beyond their borders for business. China shipped a record 100 million metric tons of steel overseas in the 12 months ended in February, a 55 percent increase from the previous year.

“‘I’m sure they are happy that at least somebody is buying it, but I don’t think that this is a strategy that Beijing wants to follow,’ said Louis Kuijs, the chief economist for greater China at the Royal Bank of Scotland.”

Nor is China’s steel exporting strategy one that U.S. steelmakers wish to see continue. Signs indicate that a turnaround has already begun in terms of importing versus buying domestically.

As reported by desertsun.com, in a recent poll conducted by American Metal Market Magazine, 61 percent of U.S. metal purchasers are relying increasingly less on imports than they did six months ago. “This comes at a time when domestic prices for a wide range of metal-based products have tumbled dramatically in the face of accelerating import competition.”

However, price is not the only reason for the uptick in domestic purchasing. Other contributing factors are quality consciousness among distributors, end users, and specifiers; a focus on total cost of buying from overseas; and a decline in American cost basis caused by accelerating U.S. technological progress.

Cost definitely is a concern for most fabricators entertaining the idea of getting into 3-D printing.

A hybrid kit created by Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies Ltd. recently won the inaugural International Additive Manufacturing Award (IAMA) for 3-D printing. The kit, which uses a tool changer to change between processes, can be integrated into any CNC machine to allow for metal deposition (via laser cladding), finishing, and inspection of parts on a single machine, is designed to make the process more affordable.

“ Hybrid technology is exciting because it offers a new way to adopt additive manufacturing – as an upgrade to a CNC machine tool,” said Dr. Jason Jones, co-founder and CEO of Hybrid Manufacturing Technologies. “Adding tool-changeable deposition heads to an existing CNC machine enables 3-D printing of metal, without the need to buy a separate machine. This significantly reduces costs and provides an intuitive adoption path for CNC operators. The combination of additive with machining offers new capabilities, including in-process finishing, that cannot be delivered by either technology independently.”