Fused fluxes are melted in a furnace, chilled, then crushed and screened for size. These pickup little moisture and recycle without alterations in particle size or composition. Bonded fluxes are powdered materials mixed dry and bonded together with a silicate, pelletized, baked, broken up, and screened for size: the process permits easy addition of deoxidizers and alloying elements. Bonded fluxes allow thicker flux layers when welding and can be identified quickly by color. Disadvantages of bonded fluxes are their absorption of moisture and alterations during handling in panicle size and composition due to particle segregation. Agglomerated fluxes are similar to bonded fluxes except that they use a ceramic binder. They require higher baking temperatures during manufacture, which limits additions of deoxidizers and alloying elements. Mechanically mixed fluxes are combinations of two or more bonded or agglomerated fluxes. They allow special flux mixtures for critical welds, but they may separate during storage, use, and flux recovery.

The less invasive laser-assisted uvulopalatoplasty (LAUP) burns away excess tissue and is performed under local anesthesia on an outpatient basis. Yet its long-term effectiveness has yet to be established, and the pain can still land you in a new grotto of hell."The incision or the laser burn has to heal while you constantly breathe, talk and swallow, so the wound is always being stretched, causing considerable pain," says John Shepard, M.D., medical director of the Mayo Clinic Sleep Disorders Center in Rochester, Minn. "One patient said that if he''d had a gun he would have shot himself, the pain was so bad." To be fair, others experience less discomfort--the equivalent of a bad sore throat for three or four days.

BIAM''s output this year? "We estimate we can make about 800,000 to 1 million (heads)," Yan said at the AMM conference. Grandis Metals'' rough estimate for worldwide annual consumption of titanium casting billet by the golf industry--excluding Japan but including the U.S., China and Japan--is 1,500 to 2,000 tonnes per year. The use of purchased scrap is between 700 and 1,000 tonnes, while sheet represents some 200 to 400 tonnes, bar 100 to 150 tonnes and welding wire 60 to 100 tonnes, according to Grandis. When Ruger Investment Casting built its Prescott, Ariz., plant in 1996-97, its entire output was dedicated-to golf club heads. Today, while Ruger doesn''t disclose golf''s portion, general manager John Thorne agreed that it was significantly less than the plant''s capacity. Ruger already is participating in, or actively pursuing, business in a wide range of markets, including marine applications, industrial, oil and gas and architectural products, among others.

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