Metal Improvement Company

This company was founded in 1945 in southern California by engineer Henry Fuchs.[1] Fuchs had been working with John Almen on new applications for shot peening of automobiles and military equipment companies produced before and during World War II. Fuchs and Almen worked at the Research Laboratory of General Motors Corporation before the start of MIC. The Almen strip or Almen system, a tool for duplicating the shot peening process, was named after John Almen.

Fuchs started in his garage[2] accompanied by his son-in-law, Fred Landecker, with the idea of working in railways car suspensions and assemblies. Nevertheless, the shot peening industry was beginning and the automotive sector was not showing much interest. So it was the aircraft industry which first began to use the beneficial processes.

The company worked, for example, in the early 1950s with the famous Douglas DC-3 aircraft. In the mid-1950s, the company worked on the wing skins of Lockheed Super Constellation aircraft.

In 1968 the company was acquired[3] by Curtiss-Wright which had begun an expansion program at its Buffalo extrusion facility, adding new forging and machining equipment for building aircraft and aerospace components.

In the 1970s, the idea of metal peening with light was explored in the company and in the metal treatment industry. Lawrence Livermore Laboratories at the end of the 1990s, working under a government contract for a laser to illuminate passing satellites, developed a process of peening with light with enough power to use it also for commercial purposes. Metal Improvement Company, under a CRADA agreement with Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, began to develop [4] this technology for commercial customers and in 2003 the company introduced the laser peening to the market.

Henry Fuchs died in 1989. He was a Professor Emeritus of Stanford University. The Society of Automotive Engineers named an award "Henry O. Fuchs"[5] in his honor.

In 2006 NASA worked with the company, and they together presented a study called: "Effects of Laser Peening, and Shot Peening on Friction Stir Welding".[6]

Today, MIC is one of the business units of the Curtiss-Wright Surface Technologies Division. With 70 facilities in North America, Europe and Asia, they provide job shop surface treatments including shot peening, laser peening, thermal spray coatings, solid film lubricant and material testing services.

• Shot peening
• Shot peen forming
• Laser Peening
• Solid Film Lubricant Coatings
• Thermal spraying
• Materials Testing Services

• C.A.S.E.
• Peenstress
• Peenscan and Peenscan Pen
• Peentex

Footnotes

• Shotpeener Articles Library
• Modern Shot Peening Technology
• Curtiss-Wright History
• Official Metal Improvement Company Website
• Curtiss-Wright Surface Technologies Division