Category: News

Nichols Portland, LLC accepts two awards in MPIF’s 2022 Powder Metallurgy (PM) Design Excellence Awards competition.

Nichols Portland, LLC accepts an award in MPIF’s 2021 international design competition.

 

Rick Scott, Director of Engineering, and Josh Hume, Manufacturing Engineer, Nichols Portland LLC, Portland, Maine, accepted an Award of Distinction in the Hand Tools/Recreation Category of the 2021 Powder Metallurgy Design Excellence Awards Competition. The award was given for a positive displacement gerotor assembly for customized performance-racing fuel pumps. Racing applications require higher delivery pressures with fuel formulations that provide very low levels of lubricity. A novel material was developed to meet these needs in which a wear-resistant hard phase is dispersed within a matrix.

 

 

MPIF Press Release: Nichols-Portland-win-DEA-from-MPIF.pdf
MPIF Website: Powder Metallurgy Design Excellence Awards

 

Metal Powder Industries Federation (MPIF)
2020 Powder Metallurgy (PM) Design Excellence

An Award of Distinction in the Automotive—Engine Category for Conventional PM components, was given to Nichols Portland LLC for a variable displacement vane-pump rotor used in an automotive engine lubrication system. The three-level part possesses numerous critical tolerance features achieved with minimal secondary operations.

Winners of the 2020 Powder Metallurgy (PM) Design Excellence Awards Competition, sponsored by the Metal Powder Industries Federation (an international trade association for the metal powder producing and consuming industries), were announced recently. Receiving grand prizes and awards of distinction, the winning parts are outstanding examples of PM’s flexibility to push forward new concepts and process controls and demonstrate the inexhaustible well of capabilities PM can marshal in the service of component design. Designers continue to choose PM for critical applications such as auto engines and transmissions, medical devices, consumer products, military applications, and more.

PM is an automated metalworking process that forms metal powders into precision components used in applications such as auto engines and transmissions, hardware, industrial machinery, sporting goods, defense, and firearms. More than 800 million pounds of PM parts are made annually in North America.