[INNOVATIONS] END OF THE LINE For Rust, IT’S THE BY PATRICIA GLYNN
If rust is the enemy of wire rope, then Frank Reick could be considered its savior. Reick, an award-winning inventor who holds approximately 40 patents, is the President of Fluoramics, Inc., the New Jersey-based producer of lubricants, greases, and oxygen-compatible thread sealants. To develop his latest invention, he spent just over two years in his laboratory devising a formula that would forestall the corrosive eff ects of rust.
HinderRust is the end result of Reick’s eff orts. T is liquid rust-inhibitor can be sprayed directly onto wire rope or applied with a paintbrush. With its application, “rust,” he points out, “never gets a chance to develop.” For the wire rope industry, Reick’s creation is
particularly notable since the destructive iron oxide compound, when left unchecked, can lead to rope failure. And when ropes break down, the outcome is, typically, never good—not only is there likely to be signifi cant fi nancial loss, but the potential for personal injury is also high. Reick describes his newest product as an extremely
surface-active, industrial anti-rust lubricant and corrosion-inhibitor which, when applied, “quickly disappears into the cable. It soaks right in so that every nook and cranny is protected.” Moreover, HinderRust contains absolutely no
solvents: it’s both environmentally and user-friendly. “I originally promised myself that if I couldn’t do it without solvents, I wouldn’t do it at all.”
PUTTING THE BRAKES ON RUST Interestingly, the wire rope industry and its rust-related concerns were far from Reick’s mind when he fi rst conceived of HinderRust. In fact, the idea fi rst came to him following a near accident on a busy highway. “I stepped on the brake pedal and nothing
happened,” he recalls. “It went right to the fl oor.” T e culprit? Rust.
This is Franklin Reick at work, on one of his Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM’s), in his lab.
“I managed to safely maneuver the vehicle into a
service station and there I saw that the entire brake line tubing had rusted out. Because of this, brake fl uid had leaked, making the brakes unresponsive.” While thankfully no harm befell him that day,
Reick believes the incident was avoidable and therefore “completely inexcusable. I thought to myself, ‘What if it had been my wife driving when the brakes failed?’ “T ere’s no excuse for that sort of time-bomb,” he insists. “I decided to see if I could develop a rust inhibitor that would put a stop to that sort of nonsense.”
WIRE ROPE EXCHANGE
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2012
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