Superior Tube veteran retires

Superior Tube Co. Inc., Collegeville, Pa., has announced the retirement of longtime company executive John Reinhart. Employed in 1969 at the company’s facility in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Reinhart started as a draftsman in the plant engineering department and worked his way up to become project engineer (1980), head of engineering (1981), and eventually general manager (1992). When the company elected to close the Wapakoneta location in 1993, Reinhart transferred to the Collegeville location as manager of manufacturing engineering. He was promoted to director of development and metallurgical engineering (1999) and finally manager of product development (2005), a position he held until his retirement earlier this year.

From the outset, Reinhart was involved in capital expenditure projects, including designing a vacuum furnace and automating the draw benches at Wapakoneta. He also gained early experience in working on nuclear power projects for Superior customers—he designed tooling to make cladding for a liquid metal fast breeder reactor and, in cooperation with industry partner Fine Tubes Ltd., Plymouth, U.K., and the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, Oxfordshire, U.K., performed rolling trials for alloys that were under development. These early experiences set the tone for his career, much of which was dedicated to designing machines, developing processes, designing tooling, researching alloys, and supporting and later spearheading capital expenditure projects.

His stint as project engineer was an effort to develop a rolling machine for Fine Tubes.

“John was part of a team that, along with some of the Fine Tubes staff, developed a continuous tube rolling machine,” said Director of Quality & New Product Development Bill Keohane. Although he was the project engineer, he remained immersed in the details. “Any engineer can conceptualize a machine, but it takes a good draftsman to design all the details so that the machine actually works,” said Plant Engineering Manager John Gross. “John’s initials are on a lot of the blueprints for that machine,” he said.

A key acquisition close to the middle of his career was a pair of high-precision tube rollers, imported from Russia, which gave the company the ability to roll hard-to-form materials, such as titanium and zirconium. These machines provided unique capabilities, helping Superior expand its market share. In recent years Reinhart was involved in testing tubes made from uncommon materials such as tantalum and rhenium, made by powder metallurgy, and titanium tube made by laser additive manufacturing.

In addition to a strong mechanical aptitude, colleagues cited his friendly interpersonal style and his interest in passing along his knowledge as key attributes that have created a lasting legacy at Superior. Some of that knowledge is invaluable, especially concerning machines that Superior designed.

“I didn’t work for John per se, but I picked up a lot of his rolling knowledge,” Gross said. “He walked me through his way of doing tube rolling design, and now I’m sharing that knowledge with the folks directly involved in tube rolling today. That knowledge would have disappeared if he had kept it to himself, and we wouldn’t know how to design processes and tooling to make new products on those machines otherwise. Because he shared his knowledge, he kept it alive.”

Because Reinhart developed many business contacts and was active in industry associations, he was at the forefront of developments in the tube business, and this knowledge helped Superior make progress into more markets. Director of Process Engineering & Metallurgy CJ Mukherjee credited Reinhart’s industry knowledge and his work in refractory metals, especially titanium, as key reasons for Superior’s market share of the medical device industry. At the same time, he wasn’t afraid to ask questions, Mukherjee said.

“John knew where his strengths were,” Mukherjee said. “He also knew where he needed assistance. If he had a question about materials or metallurgy, he’d come to me or to Larry [Shaheen, another Superior retiree]. He wasn’t shy about asking.”

One of his strengths was in organization. One of his early duties, maintaining engineering documentation, foreshadowed an enduring interest in developing and maintaining other reference material in the form of a well-organized trove of technical articles. When others had questions, it wasn’t uncommon for Reinhart to find an article, even if it predated his employment, within just minutes of starting a search.

“We’d leave a meeting, and within 15 minutes or so, he’d send out an e-mail with a scanned copy of a journal article with pertinent information from years or even decades prior,” Keohane said.

“Sometimes we’re asked to make a product that we haven’t made in 30 years, and nobody would know much about how it was done, but we’d be able to make the product because John would find the documentation,” Mukherjee said. This continuity was a big contribution to Superior’s success, he added.

Another project, one researching the company’s history for its 75th anniversary celebration, prompted then-CEO Tony Jost to ask Reinhart about writing a book about the company. He lent a hand and received credit as a contributing editor to a book about the company’s history, Superior: Land, Sea, Air, and Space. He also appeared on camera when he hosted an episode of “PCN Tours,” a production of Pennsylvania Cable Network, a series that explores manufacturing in Pennsylvania.

A member of the Tube & Pipe Association’s Extrusion, Drawing & Tube Reducing (EDTR) Council since 2001, including a stint as the council’s chair, Reinhart has always been active in the council’s efforts to organize conferences and was instrumental in developing its educational DVD, “Cold Drawing of Stainless and Carbon Steel.”

Frank Joy, manufacturing engineer for GE Global Nuclear Fuel and the current EDTR Council chair, said that in addition to sharing his knowledge, Reinhart took a bona fide interest in seeing problems solved.

“He’s the guy I would call when I had a problem,” Joy said. “We’d talk and he’d offer suggestions, and then he’d call back an hour or a day later with some more information, and then he’d call a week or two later to see what we had found out and if we had resolved it. Sharing information like that isn’t common these days, and that sort of follow-up is even less common.”

Mark Prasek, vice president of sales and marketing for Rafter Equipment Corp. and chairman of the Tube & Pipe Association’s Advisory Board, agreed that Reinhart was known for going the extra mile. “When we needed a volunteer, John could be counted on to help,” Prasek said. “In fact, he was characterized by going above and beyond to help.”

Reinhart also made significant contributions to the Tube & Pipe Journal over the years, co-writing an article on the high-precision tube roller and suggesting a handful of other topics. His other legacy, organizing trapshooting events in conjunction with TPA conferences, lives on in the Order of the Smoking Tube, which is bestowed for shooting accuracy.

Reinhart’s involvement in TPA continues in retirement.