Expertise: Hot, Cold, and Warm Forging - tool design principles, process and equipment selection, productivity and quality improvements.

Jim Henning has been associated with the forging industry for over forty years as an engineer, researcher, manager, educator, and consultant. Prior to forming Henning Educational Services in 1996 he served as the Technical Director of the Forging Industry Association for nine years. Providing a wide range of technical, problem-solving, and educational/training services, he has served as consultant to many firms involved with open-die forging, ring rolling, impression die forging, cold forging, warm forging, and hot forging of a broad variety of automotive, aerospace, and commodity products.

His broad industrial experience includes key positions in the Metallurgical Departments of Wyman-Gordon Company, Worchester, MA and Ladish Company, Milwaukee, WI, where he led projects related to non-destructive testing techniques and ways of improving metallurgical quality of nonferrous and ferrous forgings.

As a Research Leader in Metalworking at Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, OH, Jim led many technical projects for industry and government on warm forging, cold forging of steels and non-ferrous alloys, and forging of cast and PM preforms. He prepared some of the earliest technical reports about the technology of forging titanium alloys, iron-based superalloys, nickel base superalloys, PH stainless steels, as well as magnesium and aluminum alloys.

At Metal Forge, Jim was Director of Engineering and participated extensively in the development of a new greenfield plant dedicated to efficient cold and warm forging of many new automotive suspension and steering components. These efforts included employee training and education as well as facility and tooling related activities. He was instrumental in the development of value-added efforts to meet the growing demands of the automotive industry for ready-to-install products.

Jim has extensively lectured and published on topics related to forging. He writes the monthly column "Ask Jim" for FORGING magazine. He is the co-author of the Battelle book FORGING MATERIALS AND PRACTICES (Reinhold). At FIA, Jim prepared the technical report that eventually became the FIA Product Design Guide for Forgings. Jim also works closely with ASM International as a metallurgical consultant and has been lead instructor on such training efforts as Heat Treatment of Steels and Metallurgy for Non-Metallurgists. He has organized short courses and workshops on a wide variety of topics related to various forging processes.

Jim graduated from the Michigan College of Mining and Technology in metallurgical and mechanical engineering.