Heat Treat Radio #89: Metallurgical Posterchild Aniket Maske

I want to introduce you all to Aniket Maske, who is a one of Heat Treat Today’s 40 Under 40 Class of 2022 award recipients. Congratulations, Aniket, on that award.

Aniket Maske: Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s a privilege and it’s an honor.

Doug Glenn: You’re welcome. It’s our privilege to do it. I actually have sitting right here beside me our magazine open to your page. I see that you have a book published by Springer Publications.

Aniket Maske: Yes!

Doug Glenn: Thermal Electrics: Fundamentals, Material Selection, Properties and Performance. There are not many people we talk to who can say they’re an author of a book. Congratulations on that too!

Aniket Maske: It’s an honor.

Doug Glenn: We want to get a sense of the person you are but also what attracted you into metallurgy, heat treating and that type of stuff.

Aniket Maske: I’d like to thank you and Heat Treat Today for this opportunity to share my background, work experience, and something about myself.

My name is Aniket Maske. I was born in Ratnagiri which is a coastal area in Maharashtra in India. I was raised in Aurangabad, which is a very historic city because the world-famous Ajanta Ellora caves, a replica of Taj Mahal and one of the Panchakki which is like a turning wheel with respect to the water. So, I come from that kind of background from the city where I was raised. I love that.

Doug Glenn: Interesting. You went to high school and undergraduate in India? Tell us about that, briefly.

Aniket Maske: I went to high school at Little Flower High School in Aurangabad.

I did my Bachelors in College of Engineering, Pune, which was established in 1854. It is the second oldest engineering college in India and third in Asia. A couple of renowned personalities are from that school like Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, who is the first civil engineer in India. For his honor, September 15^th is called Engineer’s Day back in India, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania. Mr. C. Kumar Patel, the inventor of CO₂ laser and a National Medal of Science honoree in 1996, also comes from the same school.

Doug Glenn:  Very interesting. How about graduate school?

Aniket Maske: I went to graduate school in 2013 at New Jersey Institute of Technology on the east coast. I did my research over there for thermal electrics and tried to understand the different characterizations.

Doug Glenn:  Before we started recording, you were mentioning to us that you had a group of guys  with whom you were in the same undergraduate school in India.

Aniket Maske: They were my very good friends: Shlok and Vishal. They are from the College of Engineering, Pune. Me and Vishal are from New Jersey Institute of Technology, so we share that bond.

Doug Glenn:  Very nice! So, you’ve got friends here. You’ve been in the States since 2013.

Aniket Maske:  Yes.

Doug Glenn:  I’m always curious about this: what it is that first attracted you to metallurgy and/or heat treating? At one point in time, you probably didn’t even know what metallurgy was, right? What was it that brought you into the industry?

Aniket Maske:  I would say curiosity.

[blockquote author="" style="2"]In the early 2000’s we went to Delhi, the capital of India, and I saw the Iron Pillar. I didn’t even know the meaning of rust at that moment in time. I only knew what my parents used to say, “If something is red on the metal, don’t touch it, because it might be itchy.”[/blockquote] We went to the Iron Pillar. It was tall, and the Iron Pillar doesn’t even rust. It was built around 480 AD, which is about 1600 years ago. It is around 13,000 pounds, roughly 24 feet by 16 inches in diameter, and it doesn’t rust! That was my first interaction with respect to metals.

Another curiosity is (and it might sound really different) but: why are cars made of metal and not with plastic? I used to call it plastic, not polymer, in that time. That was really interesting: why is everything made differently?

One of the major things I remember is 20 years ago on February 1, 2003, the Columbia space shuttle disaster occurred. And the first Indian-born astronaut, Kalpana Chawla (the first woman) was on the shuttle.

I heard about the disaster on the radio, and then I started reading: What is the thermal soaking, what is the protective layer, what is the thermal protection system, how is it 3000°F outside but the steam temperature inside should be 350°F? That curiosity got me into the metal industry.

Doug Glenn:  When was it, specifically, that you decided to go into metallurgy?

Aniket Maske:  Yes. I did my engineering specifically in metallurgical engineering.

Doug Glenn:  You’re one of the few and the proud. Way to go! That’s excellent. We’ve talked to a variety of people in the United States who say now the more common thing to study material science. There are very, very few schools that use just metallurgy.

What did your family think when you decided to study metallurgy? Did they ask, “What are you doing, Aniket?”

Aniket Maske:  We don’t want to go there because I’m the black sheep of my family.

I’ll say why: I’m the only engineer in all of my family. The rest of them are all doctors. That’s why I call myself the black sheep of the family. They really see me differently. My mom and dad are doctors. My wife is a doctor, Dr. Sonal Mandale. She also has a master’s degree and is just now graduating in public health and epidemiology.

Doug Glenn:  Epidemiology, that’s a hot topic, these days.

Aniket Maske:  Oh, yes. And she graduated right during Covid. But my family was really supportive. One of my uncles, a professor, Dr. Vilas Kharat , is a renowned mathematician. He helped me to explore my curiosity. My family helped me a lot too, “Okay, you want to do it? You give it a try.”

Doug Glenn:  A supportive family makes such a difference!

When you got to graduate school in New Jersey, what was your focus of study there?

Aniket Maske: When I came over here, I was focused on how the world is facing a major problem with respect to green energy. We needed to find an alternative source. Energy consumption was increasing, and we wanted to protect the environment at the same time.

I was working with my professor, and we talked about something called “thermal electrics.” What is thermal electrics? What is the Baker-Nathan effect, what is the Seebeck effect? This word sounds very big, but the simple definition is: if something is converting from electrical energy into temperature (or thermal energy to a temperature gradient into electricity).

You’ve got thermal electric models. It is a newer kind of concept with respect to silicon-germanium, but it is also used in radioisotope thermal generators for space. Even in the Mars Rover, it was used in the RDP. That got to me, with what I need to do with respect to the research and everything in my grad school.

Doug Glenn: Who is your current employer?

Aniket Maske: Automatic Springs Products Corp.

Doug Glenn: What are you doing at Automatic Springs Products Corp., metallurgically-wise?

Aniket Maske:  I just want to give a brief introduction about the company: Automatic Springs Products is a tier 1 and tier 2 automotive company shipping to 33 countries on six continents. The company was founded in 1950. Automatic Springs is technology focused, high-volume manufacturing for customers for the compression, extension, and torsion spring, as the name says. But we also do wire form, flat ring stamping, Belleville washers, and washers and assembly.

We are vertically integrated and have full spectrum providers of superior quality metal products. We do assemblies, we have a tooling department, we do heat treating in-house, and we have four austemper lines which were installed in the 1980’s. We have done heat treatments since 1960, we have 52 inline stress relieving ovens, we do coating (parts coating), and all that sort of thing in-house, and we also do manual heat set. We are one of the pioneers. We have a COBOT which does a heat set on each individual part to make a Belleville washer and only we do it.

There is a lot of heat treatment going on around here, and I am a resident expert for the automotive heat treatment and coating management for CQI-9 and CQI-12. That is a key requirement for the heat treat supplier. Currently, I am the director of quality and the chief metallurgist for the company. Ironically, the president of the company is also a metallurgist.

Doug Glenn:  That is a little unusual, yes! He’ll know what you say when you mention austenite or martensite or whatever.

Aniket Maske:  That’s a relief, having that kind of experience. He was the president of Spring Manufacturing Institute, so he had tremendous knowledge about the process.

We do all the kind of different processing, and we have a lot of heat treatment in-house.

Doug Glenn:  All good. We’ve got a good sense of where you came from, why you got into the industry and what you’re doing now.

I want to ask you something that’s just a little bit more personal: When you think about your current work now and your grad work, what is the most enjoyable? What really puts a smile on your face about your work?

Aniket Maske:  Working together as a team. We say to serve and bless our customer, team members, community, and a suppliers. [blockquote author="" style="1"]The problem solving is the key for me. I love problem solving.[/blockquote] That is one of the key aspects for me. If I don’t have problem solving to do, I shouldn’t be saying this, but sometimes I’ll get bored. Problem solving is the spice in my life.

Doug Glenn:  That’s good! You’re looking for a challenge. Unfortunately, to be a problem solver, you’ve got to have problems.

Aniket Maske:  We’ve got a lot of those.

Doug Glenn: I find it fascinating, as much as we know about metallurgy and things of that sort, there is still so much we don’t know.

Aniket Maske:  I think we only know, I’ll say, a very minimum amount of metallurgy, right now. There are so many aspects which are still undefined.

Doug Glenn:  Yes. With big data, cloud computing, and things of that sort, we are going to see some amazing changes over the next decades. Right now, we’re on a kind of slow growth.

You’re out of school now, but you seem like the type of guy that’s going to keep himself well informed. Do you have any recommendations to other people in the industry about resources to keep current on metallurgy knowledge?

Aniket Maske: I definitely use ASM. Doug, I really want to thank you and Heat Treat Today for the information in the magazines. They keeps us on the edge, they give us information. Even Heat Treat Daily is really good!

I look into Industrial Heating, and I keep in touch through LinkedIn, but Heat Treat Today helps me a lot. I’ve been following it for a long time.

Doug Glenn: Thank you, I appreciate that! Consistently across the board, people also speak very highly of ASM, so I want to give them a plug, as well. They’ve got some excellent courses.

Now for the “rapid round”. Are you a MAC or a PC guy?

Aniket Maske: 100% PC.

Doug Glenn: I’m not even going to ask why on that one!

Aniket Maske: I can answer that. It’s because I like to be a PC person. MAC is too cosmetic for me and too aesthetic for me. That’s why I stuck to PC.

Doug Glenn: When you consume your media: digital or print?

Aniket Maske:  I would say I like it to be printed because I have a habit of writing notes on it, marking it all the time. But, at the same time, I like to keep an electronic copy with me. You can just glance it through and read it. It’s easily accessible. But I prefer both print and digital copies.

Doug Glenn:  It’s not an unusual answer. There are advantages to each.

I think you’re happy in your work . If you had to change jobs, would you be looking for a job that was very flexible as far as work schedule, or would you go for high pay?

Aniket Maske:  I will always go for the flexible job. Keeping that balance in life with respect to getting things done, being productive. I think a flexible work schedule is really good, because you need to balance your professional and personal life. If you have skill and you have a flexible work schedule, I think pay will follow. It’s the kind of industry and the kind of world that we’re living in. Flexible schedules work.

Doug Glenn:  Good! Three more quick questions: Dream job? I’m sure the people at Automatic Spring know that you’re happy in your work, but let’s say you didn’t have to worry about money. What would you do? What would be your dream job?

Aniket Maske:  I would like to get into innovating a better future for our next generation. And that’s something we do in our day to day lives, even with the small things like looking at the environment.

That’s what I want to do. I want to encourage people. That might be in the teaching field. I like to interact with the kids. I used to teach in the IT world. I want to ask the kids in physics: Why does the water look so blue? That’s what I love. I do the same thing in my company.

Doug Glenn:  So, you might be a teacher. I mean, maybe that’s what you’d love to do.

Aniket Maske:  Yes. An academic person with industrial experience.

Doug Glenn:  What do you do with your free time? When you’re not working, what’s your favorite thing?

Aniket Maske:  I like to spend time with my wife. We go on long drives. And my Zen moment is when I cook food. The best thing is, I like to read. And it’s not just about technical things. I can pick up any newspaper and start reading. I love reading; it’s my peace.

Doug Glenn:  What is a recent book you’ve read?

Aniket Maske:  Harvard Business School just published a book. I follow the Harvard Business Journal because I did Organizational Leadership from them. They had a book which has 100 influential articles from the last century all published there.

So, I’m reading through that to see how the goals are being achieved. A goal is one thing, and getting into the right trend is another thing.

Doug Glenn: Tell me your favorite app, movie, or magazine. (And Heat Treat Today can’t be the answer!)

Aniket Maske:  Well, that was my first choice, so now I need to think!

I like movies a lot. Lakshya is one of my favorite movies. Lakshya is a movie which is very good in India. It is a motivational movie about a person that goes into the army when all his fellow friends of his feel like he is not a goal-oriented person. He’s very much focused to achieve it. He’s saying, “If you decide, you’ll achieve it.”

With respect to apps, I like to read the newspaper apps all the time — The Wall Street Journal and I try to stay connected with Times of India, too.

As for magazines, I glance through technical magazines or sometimes I go around at the airport and find something interesting. If it’s a gossipy kind of thing, I will read that too. I’m not that critical.

Doug Glenn:  You’re a reader, I can tell.

Doug Glenn:  Aniket, thank you so much. It was really good to get to know you a little bit.

Aniket Maske: Once again, it’s a privilege and honor to be here.

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