Interview of Dr. Babu Padmanabhan with Mr. Sandeep Nadkarni of Modern Plastic      Polymers during the month of Oct-07

With an in-house foundry in place, what are the latest materials of construction being used by STEER for twin-screw extrusion?

We presently run a tool-steel foundry at Coimbatore. WR6, a 'high­-speed steel' that is similar in metallurgy to ASP 60 grade of HSS has been tried by us for elements and barrel liners. Our 10 per cent Vanadium grade, WR5 has gone through a complete material characterisation including fracture toughness testing that is generally used for testing aerospace materials (at NAL facility). WR5 provides a very high abrasive wear resistance with phenomenal strength and toughness properties. We have also developed a high corrosion resistant version of WR5 called CR5. CRS with 18 per cent chromium and high levels of vanadium is our standard barrel liner material. Apart from using our own capabilities, we work with Kennametal and Kubota. Kennametal offers a unique solution for lining barrels with more than 50 per cent tungsten carbide in a 1 mm thick nickel-chromium layer. Kubota offers us special grades of powder metallurgy materials with nickel and cobalt bases with high wear and corrosion resistance.

Turnkey solutions and complete plant engineering are the thrust areas for us, we will look apply this technology in energy food, pharmaceuticals and paint processing in the coming years.

In this fast-growing technological era, how does STEER plan to continually upgrade its product portfolio to meet specialised customer demands?

Thomas Paine, whose writing inspired American Independence famously said, "Lead, follow or get out of the way'~ While we lead by offering cutting-edge technology to our customers, we follow our customers extremely closely. Our business is structured in a way to maximise interaction with our customers at the highest level of management. I will soon move to Japan and work from our Tokyo office. It turns out that we have our highest customer density in Japan at this time and it is a highly discerning market. STEER already supplies over 30 percent custom-made parts to Japanese customers.
Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, ex-president of India, has asked all of us to work in a mission mode. Our organisation has always worked on every project with this zeal. We are constantly innovating to meet the expectations of our customers. We see a lot of improvising around us, but we do not believe in this since it solves a problem only temporarily. Product innovations occur not by improvising but by seeking to achieve lasting improvements.

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