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Close Joint-Stock Company – Scientific and Production Company - Mechanical Engineering and Solid-Surface Hardening (ZAO "NPK" TECHMASH & OPZ")

The "Close Joint-Stock Company – Scientific and Production Company - Mechanical Engineering and Solid-Surface Hardening" (ZAO "NPK” TECHMASH & OPZ") has been created by the Soviet Russian scientist-metallographer, professor, Doctor of Engineering Sciences, RSFSR honoured inventor K.Z.Shepeliakovsky in 1989 following the Order by the Minister for automobile, tractor and agricultural machine industry of the USSR.

K.Z.Shepeliakovsky was a disciple of two great electricians of the end of the 30's of XX century: at first, of academician A.I.Berg - a specialist in radio electronics, and later of a founder of the eddy-current surface hardening of steel – an associate member of the USSR Academy of Sciences V.P.Vologdin. This has finally determined his further fate and, to a large extent, contributed to the development of this method in this country and abroad.

His contribution to the world science can not be overestimated.

He showed that the fast-speed electrical heating of steel makes it possible to obtain 11-15 points super fine austenite grain (GOST 5639, ASTM), and this is the main account for its high strength and plastic properties in the hardened and low-annealed state that were unachievable earlier with the stove heating.

In the metallurgy industry, he used the latest smelting techniques to develop reduced and specified hardness penetration carbon steels (RHP and SHP steels) featuring real stable super fine grain making it possible to replace expensive alloyed steels and labor-intensive thermal and chemical-thermal treatment processes with the promising thermal treatment method - solid-surface hardening (SSH) designed by him.

He was the first in the world in 1960 to implement into SSH-based production of 55PP steel gears using intensive cooling with the fast water stream during SSH process.

Contrary to the public opinion in those years, such drastic cooling allowed substantial increasing, without generation of cracks, in hardness of high- and low-carbon steels owing to suppression of the martensite tempering process while it is being formed during hardening in mild cooling media – oil, emulsion and the popular today in the West - water-soluble polymers.

He is the author of the fundamental field research into short-run processes of self-tempering and eddy-current tempering of steel. He was the first to prove the adequacy of these processes with the stove tempering.

His merits in the machine industry electrotechnics are invaluable. He continued V.P.Vologdin's traditions by proving in practice the prevailing role of audio frequencies over radio frequencies in thermal treatment and smithcraft.

The method evolved by him based on his knowledge in radio engineering to stabilize eddy-current heating with a feedback on the final electrical parameter is now used worldwide.

He was the founder of the metallographers-metallurgists and electric heat-treaters school. He trained more 25 PhDs and Doctors of Science, as well as a vast number of young specialists.

He and his associates managed to implement their high economic parameter developments on the shop floors in Russia and CIS, namely gears, axle shafts, universal-joint crosses, railroad bearings, springs and many other mechanical parts made of RHP and SHP steels.

On the death of K.Z.Shepeliakovsky in 2001, the team of ZAO "NPK" TEKHMASH & OPZ" - his disciples and team-mates - developed 3-rd generation RHP steels with grains #10-12 that can be obtained both with eddy-current and stove heating. They continue his deed and actively facilitate the deed promotion both in Russia and abroad.