Titanium created the $300+ Driver Category and replaced steel as the pro-line material of choice.
"With tremendous continued growth in this sector, PowerMetal™ is poised to empower the next generation of golf equipment including drivers, irons, wedges, putters & shafts."
John Hoeflich, Sporting Goods Executive
PowerMetal alloys utilize the Hall-Petch Effect to achieve dramatic increases in mechanical properties. As grain boundaries get smaller, material properties improve, and PowerMetal’s grains are on the nano-scale from 10-50 nm on average.
With a significantly higher Yield Stress of 260 ksi (1785 MPa) than titanium or steel alloys, PowerMetal’s nano HS-80 system offers a specific strength just slightly higher than that of maraging steels and beta titaniums, but with added design and manufacturing flexibility to give you the strength where you need it at a competitive cost.
In many sporting goods applications, golf clubs and baseball bats for example, the ability of PowerMetal alloys to return most of the impact energy back to the ball for increased distance is a great advantage to the player, and this is due to the high yield strength and elastic limit of PowerMetal. Many high strength alloys can be brittle, but PowerMetal’s inherent resilience is due to the unique atomic structure that our nanotechnology provides. In fact, PowerMetal alloys have shown increased strength and ductility at high strain rates similar to those that occur during baseball and softball impact collisions.
Pin-on-Disc Wear Studies of PowerMetal alloys show very high wear resistance due to the nano-sized grains. This inherent Wear Resistance coupled with the ability to add additional ceramic particles or alloying elements allows PowerMetal scientists to create custom high wear alloy solutions for critical safety and performance applications.
The small grain boundaries in PowerMetal alloys produce a very high Hardness value through the thickness of the material due to the Hall-Petch Effect. This high hardness value can add an additional protective and scratch-resistant layer to a wide variety of products from Swiss watches and jewelry to baseball bats, motorcycle parts and chrome replacement components.
Most high strength nanomaterials and many high strength specialty superalloys can be brittle which offsets their usefulness in a many sporting goods and consumer applications. PowerMetal may be the only example of Nanocrystalline material produced by a one-step process exhibiting highly ductile behavior. PowerMetal’s unique nanocrystalline microstructure provides a minimum of 7% and up to 10-15% elongation, which is well above the 5% elongation threshold often used by structural designers to separate ductile from brittle behavior.
One of the unique attributes of the PowerMetal manufacturing process is the relatively low coefficient of friction that results from a slightly anisotropic grain boundary orientation and an exceptionally smooth surface layer. Applications for low friction in sporting goods and consumer products include: bearings, ski and snowboard edges, and ice skate blades.