Metallurgist

Last updated April 24, 2019

Georgius Agricola, author of De re metallica, an important early work on metal extraction, also known as the father of metallurgy Georgius Agricola.jpg — Georgius Agricola, author of *De re metallica*, an important early work on metal extraction, also known as the father of metallurgy

Definition:

Metallurgist also known as metallurgical engineers or material science engineers is a material scientist or technician who specializes in metals. A metallurgist has knowledge of metallurgy but applies that knowledge to products and process to create something new and better. Metallurgist work with different metals as well as alloys; metals that are mixed with each other or other elements to create materials with specific desirable properties. Metallurgists may test items or do failure analysis to research the material, and choose the best one for each specific product or process.

Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. Metallurgy is used to separate metals from their ore. Metallurgy is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to the production of metals, and the engineering of metal components for usage in products for consumers and manufacturers. The production of metals involves the processing of ores to extract the metal they contain, and the mixture of metals, sometimes with other elements, to produce alloys. Metallurgy is distinguished from the craft of metalworking, although metalworking relies on metallurgy, as medicine relies on medical science, for technical advancement. The science of metallurgy is subdivided into chemical metallurgy and physical metallurgy.

Failure analysis is the process of collecting and analyzing data to determine the cause of a failure, often with the goal of determining corrective actions or liability. According to Bloch and Geitner, machinery failures reveal a reaction chain of cause and effect… usually a deficiency commonly referred to as the symptom…”. failure analysis can save money, lives, and resources if done correctly and acted upon. It is an important discipline in many branches of manufacturing industry, such as the electronics industry, where it is a vital tool used in the development of new products and for the improvement of existing products. The failure analysis process relies on collecting failed components for subsequent examination of the cause or causes of failure using a wide array of methods, especially microscopy and spectroscopy. Nondestructive testing (NDT) methods are valuable because the failed products are unaffected by analysis, so inspection sometimes starts using these methods.

Other Metallurgist:

^[1]"Chemical metallurgists- test ores to determine the recoverability of metals from them, and design processes to recover them efficiently. They also monitor metal corrosion and fatigue, and develop ways to strengthen metals. They may also test metals to ensure they're of acceptable quality.

Physical metallurgists- monitor the behavior of metals under stress, and write reports on test results. They also investigate accidents potentially caused by metallurgical failure.

Process metallurgists- design metal parts and control the processes through which they're shaped, such as casting. They also weld and solder metal parts together.

Metallurgists interested in the environment can help design cleaner, less wasteful processes that produce less slag to be land-filled. They can also help optimize product designs so that they're lighter, requiring fewer resources to produce and less fuel to transport."

Job Expectations:

^[2] Once one begins this career, he/she will work with customers to figure out what best material and process to use for their product. While doing this you will have keep record of all the test and research you have to done to provide the customer with the results. Once all of this is finalized you may have to follow these steps to provide the customer with more parts.

Salary Expectations:

^[3] Metallurgist Engineer salary ranges from high $50,000 to mid $100,000. The median range for this job is around $90,000. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “the outlook for this field from present until 2026 is about 2%.”

Education:

^[4] This field of study requires at least a bachelor's degree. Furthering your studies will allow for a broader choice of work in this field. If you decide you want to teach in this field you will need a master’s or doctoral degree. After finishing you’re schooling you will need to pass the Fundamentals of Engineering exam by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) to be licensed.

Further Information:

You can find more information on this career/ study at the following websites.

https://www.allaboutcareers.com/careers/job-profile/metallurgist

https://study.com/directory/category/Engineering/Metallurgical_Engineering.html

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/materials-engineers.htm

https://www.environmentalscience.org/career/metallurgist

Related Research Articles

An alloy is a combination of metals and of a metal or another element. Alloys are defined by a metallic bonding character. An alloy may be a solid solution of metal elements or a mixture of metallic phases. Intermetallic compounds are alloys with a defined stoichiometry and crystal structure. Zintl phases are also sometimes considered alloys depending on bond types.

Bronze is a 80+% copper alloy and 90+% copper&tin alloy with often the addition of other metals, such as aluminium, manganese, nickel or zinc, and sometimes non-metals or metalloids such as arsenic, phosphorus or silicon. These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as stiffness, ductility, or machinability.

Steel alloy made by combining iron and other elements

Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, and sometimes other elements. Because of its high tensile strength and low cost, it is a major component used in buildings, infrastructure, tools, ships, automobiles, machines, appliances, and weapons.

Cast iron iron or a ferrous alloy which has been liquefied then poured into a mould to solidify

Cast iron is a group of iron-carbon alloys with a carbon content greater than 2%. Its usefulness derives from its relatively low melting temperature. The alloy constituents affect its colour when fractured: white cast iron has carbide impurities which allow cracks to pass straight through, grey cast iron has graphite flakes which deflect a passing crack and initiate countless new cracks as the material breaks, and ductile cast iron has spherical graphite "nodules" which stop the crack from further progressing.

Extractive metallurgy is a branch of metallurgical engineering wherein process and methods of extraction of metals from their natural mineral deposits are studied. The field is a materials science, covering all aspects of the types of ore, washing, concentration, separation, chemical processes and extraction of pure metal and their alloying to suit various applications, sometimes for direct use as a finished product, but more often in a form that requires further working to achieve the given properties to suit the applications.

Heat treating process of heating something to alter it

Heat treating is a group of industrial and metalworking processes used to alter the physical, and sometimes chemical, properties of a material. The most common application is metallurgical. Heat treatments are also used in the manufacture of many other materials, such as glass. Heat treatment involves the use of heating or chilling, normally to extreme temperatures, to achieve a desired result such as hardening or softening of a material. Heat treatment techniques include annealing, case hardening, precipitation strengthening, tempering, carburizing, normalizing and quenching. It is noteworthy that while the term heat treatment applies only to processes where the heating and cooling are done for the specific purpose of altering properties intentionally, heating and cooling often occur incidentally during other manufacturing processes such as hot forming or welding.

Cupronickel or copper-nickel (CuNi) is an alloy of copper that contains nickel and strengthening elements, such as iron and manganese. The copper contents typically varies from 60 to 90 percent.

Metalworking is the process of working with metals to create individual parts, assemblies, or large-scale structures. The term covers a wide range of work from large ships and bridges to precise engine parts and delicate jewelry. It therefore includes a correspondingly wide range of skills, processes, and tools.

Copper extraction refers to the methods used to obtaining copper from its ores. The conversion of copper consists of a series of physical and electrochemical processes. Methods have evolved and vary with country depending on the ore source, local environmental regulations, and other factors.

Quenching rapid cooling of a workpiece to obtain certain material properties

In materials science, quenching is the rapid cooling of a workpiece in water, oil or air to obtain certain material properties. A type of heat treating, quenching prevents undesired low-temperature processes, such as phase transformations, from occurring. It does this by reducing the window of time during which these undesired reactions are both thermodynamically favorable, and kinetically accessible; for instance, quenching can reduce the crystal grain size of both metallic and plastic materials, increasing their hardness.

In metallurgy, a non-ferrous metal is a metal, including alloys, that does not contain iron (ferrite) in appreciable amounts.

Annealing, in metallurgy and materials science, is a heat treatment that alters the physical and sometimes chemical properties of a material to increase its ductility and reduce its hardness, making it more workable. It involves heating a material above its recrystallization temperature, maintaining a suitable temperature for a suitable amount of time, and then cooling.

Arsenical bronze is an alloy in which arsenic, as opposed to or in addition to tin or other constituent metals, is added to copper to make bronze. The use of arsenic with copper, either as the secondary constituent or with another component such as tin, results in a stronger final product and better casting behaviour.

Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys. It began far back in prehistory. The earliest surviving iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being produced from iron ores from Sub-Saharan Africa to China. The use of wrought iron was known by the 1st millennium BC, and its spread marked the Iron Age. During the medieval period, means were found in Europe of producing wrought iron from cast iron using finery forges. For all these processes, charcoal was required as fuel.

Metallurgy in pre-Columbian America is the extraction and purification of metals, as well as creating metal alloys and fabrication with metal by Indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to European contact in the late 15th century. Indigenous Americans have been using native metals from ancient times, with recent finds of gold artifacts in the Andean region dated to 2155–1936 BCE, and North American copper finds dated to approximately 5000 BCE. The metal would have been found in nature without need for smelting techniques and shaped into the desired form using heat and cold hammering techniques without chemically altering it by alloying it. To date "no one has found evidence that points to the use of melting, smelting and casting in prehistoric eastern North America." In South America the case is quite different. Indigenous South Americans had full metallurgy with smelting and various metals being purposely alloyed. Metallurgy in Mesoamerica and Western Mexico may have developed following contact with South America through Ecuadorian marine traders.

Metals and metal working had been known to the people of modern Italy since the Bronze Age. By 53 BCE, Rome had already expanded to control an immense expanse of the Mediterranean. This included nine provinces radiating from Italy to its islands, Spain, Macedonia, Africa, Asia Minor, Syria and Greece, and by the end of the Emperor Trajan's reign, the Roman Empire had grown further to encompass parts of Britain, Egypt, all of modern Germany west of the Rhine, Dacia, Noricum, Judea, Armenia, Illyria and Thrace. As the empire grew, so did its need for metals.

Conservation and restoration of copper-based objects

The conservation and restoration of copper and copper-alloy objects is the preservation and protection of objects of historical and personal value made from copper or copper alloy. When applied to items of cultural heritage, this activity is generally undertaken by a conservator-restorer.

Non-ferrous extractive metallurgy is one of the two branches of extractive metallurgy which pertains to the processes of reducing valuable, non-iron metals from ores or raw material. Metals like zinc, copper, lead, aluminium as well as rare and noble metals are of particular interest in this field, while the more common metal, iron, is considered a major impurity. Like ferrous extraction, non-ferrous extraction primarily focuses on the economic optimization of extraction processes in separating qualitatively and quantitatively marketable metals from its impurities (gangue).

References

↑ "How to Become a Metallurgist | EnvironmentalScience.org". www.environmentalscience.org. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
↑ "Metallurgist Job Description | AllAboutCareers". www.allaboutcareers.com. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
↑ "Materials Engineers : Occupational Outlook Handbook: : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics". www.bls.gov. Retrieved 2018-04-24.
↑ "Metallurgical Engineering". Study.com. Retrieved 2018-04-24.

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[1] "How to Become a Metallurgist | EnvironmentalScience.org". www.environmentalscience.org. Retrieved 2018-04-24.

[2] "Metallurgist Job Description | AllAboutCareers". www.allaboutcareers.com. Retrieved 2018-04-24.

[3] "Materials Engineers : Occupational Outlook Handbook: : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics". www.bls.gov. Retrieved 2018-04-24.

[4] "Metallurgical Engineering". Study.com. Retrieved 2018-04-24.