R3 Technical Committee Meeting

The NFFS Reject Rate Reduction (R3) Technical Committee will meet on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, at 1:00 p.m. Central Time for its third technical working session.

This meeting will move the committee further into the technical substance of the R3 program, with an emphasis on recurring casting defects and production challenges associated with Nickel Aluminum Bronze (NAB) and Copper-Nickel (CuNi) alloys.

The meeting will begin with a brief review of the updated R3 technical intake form and the revisions made in response to committee and industry feedback. From there, the discussion will focus on the types of defects participating foundries are encountering, where those defects are typically discovered, and how similar problems may be described or classified differently across the industry.

Recent R3 industry engagement has reinforced that recurring quality and production challenges in these alloy systems are not isolated to a single company. The committee will therefore be encouraged to discuss, at an appropriate level, the issues they are seeing internally without being asked to disclose proprietary production data, customer-sensitive information, or company-specific reject rates.

Discussion topics will include:

• Common defect types observed in NAB and CuNi castings

• Where defects are discovered during production, inspection, machining, or downstream processing

• Internal versus customer-discovered quality issues

• Corrective actions and process changes that foundries have already attempted

• Approaches that have produced improvement, as well as those that have not

• Recurring technical problems that may warrant deeper R3 investigation or confidential follow-up

The objective is to begin developing a clearer industry-level picture of the recurring defect mechanisms affecting these important alloy families and to identify practical opportunities for future technical assistance, benchmarking, and collaborative problem solving.

R3 is a collaborative technical improvement effort, not an audit. Participants are encouraged to share experience at the level they are comfortable, with company-specific and sensitive information protected as appropriate.