ATEK Metal Technologies Announces Technical Alliance Partnership with Material Insights
Mar 28, 2016
Article
March 23, 2016
ATEK Metal Technologies is proud to announce its technical alliance in partnering with Material Insights, LLC. The purpose of the alliance is to further expand ATEK’s offering of high integrity aluminum castings in advanced materials and process technologies. The company believes Material Insights will form an integral part of its overall execution strategy.
Material Insights is a consulting agency specializing in advising clients on materials engineering and casting processes, optimizing processing for new product application, and the evaluation and implementation of new technologies. Mr. Rod Riek, principal at Material Insights, LLC, founded the agency after nearly 40 very successful years serving the manufacturing industry and engineered product companies. 
Rod’s career touched several large OEM firms including GM, ITT, and Harley-Davidson. In addition, Rod is co-inventor on several patents related to materials processing. He has been a leader or contributing member of teams involved in a variety of achievements, including:
- First commercialization of semisolid aluminum processing
- Large scale deployment of counter-gravity investment casting for steel and superalloys
- Establishment of a robust materials engineering function within Harley-Davidson Motor Company serving H-D’s new product development and manufacturing
Rod brings to ATEK a unique combination of extensive experience with both casting processes and the development of engineered components. This experience brings high value input to ATEK and our customers, both in achieving a thorough understanding of application requirements, and in optimizing our processing to meet those requirements with high reliability and confidence.
Together ATEK and Material Insights are also aggressively pursuing new technologies and processes to advance the placement of aluminum casting and alloy optimization to satisfy the ever growing demand for high strength and lightweight solutions.