GOLD MEDAL AWARDED TO AJ BARNES

2 July 2008

AJ BARNES AWARDED GOLD MEDAL

LONDON, (July 2, 2008) - AJ Barnes has been presented with the prestigious Gold Medal Award by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. 

The Institute's Gold Medal is a premier award given to a company, team or individual who has made a significant contribution to the industrial application of materials. This year's award to AJ Barnes is for his dedication to advancing superplasticity and superplastic forming as a new process.

The medal was presented to AJ by the President of the Institute, Barry Lye at the Institute's Premier Awards Dinner in London on Wednesday, 2 July.

The Gold Medal was awarded in recognition of a lifetime's achievement in the development and commercialisation of SPF (Super-Plastically Formable) alloys and applications.

The nomination process was supported by letters of recommendation not only from AJ's peers and colleagues, but from customers in the US and UK who have benefited from AJ's expertise and dedication.

AJ is Superform's Technical Vice President, based at their Riverside, CA plant. He worked on the development of the SPF alloys from the beginning of their development in 1969, in the laboratories of  Tube Investments before joining Superform which was established in 1973, to commercialise these new aluminium alloys and forming processes.

Superform, part of the Luxfer Group, is the world leader in superplastically formed aluminium. Over the past 35 years Superform has developed exclusive forming processes for materials ranging from medium-strength aluminium alloys to high-strength airframe alloys and carbon composites. In-house CATIA and CADCAM systems and high-technology milling capabilities enable Superform to offer three-dimensional sheet-forming solutions for small and large parts ranging from car body panels to specialist aerospace components to decorative architectural panels.

Superforming gives designers the freedom to create complex geometric shapes that conventional stamping equipment simply cannot produce, from subtle concave forms to intricate parts with secondary features�and on most projects, the tooling investment for Superforming is far less than that associated with conventional matched-die stamping tools.

Superform invented and continues to extend the boundaries of the unique Superforming process and a large part of its success is due to the dedication and skill of AJ Barnes.

The photograph shows AJ Barnes (on the left) receiving his gold medal from President Barry Lye.