Fort Wayne Metals

It’s only fitting that Ed Mild would find his way back to Nitinol after meeting the man who discovered the shape memory alloy.

Ed, a Senior Metallurgist at Fort Wayne Metals, may be the only person still working in the materials industry with direct ties to William Buehler, who discovered Nitinol in 1958. 🤯

With considerable technical expertise around alloy melting and refinement, Ed has helped grow both the scale and quality of our Nitinol production, most recently culminating in the creation of Altus™ Nitinol. His leadership has enabled Fort Wayne Metals to control our Nitinol supply chain, from melt to finished material. 🔥

Today, he is focused on passing that knowledge forward to the next generation of Nitinol innovators, including Dr. Jeremy Schaffer and Dr. Kyle Fezi. 🧠

As Ed puts it: “No one comes to work with Nitinol and is bored. The joy is in tackling those challenges as a team and continuously improving the quality of our products.” 🚀

A hometown collaboration powering Nitinol innovation.

When Dr. Kyle Fezi, Senior Materials Engineer and member of the Indiana Tech Engineering Department Industrial Advisory Board, set out to explore next-generation Nitinol through 3D metal printing, he partnered with Indiana Tech.

Through experimentation and iterative learning, students successfully produced Nitinol samples for evaluation and testing, contributing valuable insights to ongoing studies and future applications.

Students benefited as well, gaining hands-on experience in the complete metal printing workflow, from design and build ex*****on to post-processing and machining.

It’s a perfect example of how local partnerships accelerate learning and advance the development of high-performance materials.

Sustainability doesn’t always show up in big moments. More often, it’s built quietly over time, in stages, and in ways that reflect our commitment to safety and continuous improvement.

At Fort Wayne Metals, that means making smarter choices every day:
☀️ Investing in solar energy
💡 Transitioning to LED lighting
♻️ Recycling materials
🌱 Composting efforts

And now, we’re taking it further by closely evaluating energy use across our facilities to reduce consumption and operate more efficiently. Step by step, we're building sustainability for a greener future.