TuffTek by NanoMech is among the products honored with a 2014 Edison Award. Inspired by Thomas Edison's persistence and inventiveness, the annual awards recognize innovation, creativity and ingenuity in the global economy. Each recipient will be honored April 30, at the Edison Awards Annual Gala in San Francisco.
"It's exciting to see companies like NanoMech continuing Thomas Edison's legacy of challenging conventional thinking," said Frank Bonafilia, Edison Awards' executive director. "Edison Awards recognizes the game-changing products and services, and the teams that brought them to consumers."
Edison Award nominees are judged by more than 3,000 senior business executives and academics from across the nation whose votes acknowledge the finalists' success in meeting the award's stringent criteria of quality.
"The TuffTek platform is the company's patented, award winning and nanoengineered advanced coating technology incorporated into cutting tools and wear parts for machining materials used in automotive, aerospace, energy and other sectors, and critical wear parts for machines and vehicles," said company CEO Jim Phillips. "Its novel bio-inspired surface architecture -- designed to mimic a lotus leaf -- is capable of self-sustained lubrication.”
NanoMech was founded in 2002 by Dr. Ajay Malshe, chief technology officer, who credited this award to his team of scientists, and the support of Nano Materials Science and Engineering Institute at the University of Arkansas. In 2003, NanoMech began working to develop nanomanufactured products based on a coating technology pioneered by Dr. Malshe and exclusively licensed from the UA. From 2003 until 2008, NanoMech developed various applications of the NanoSpray technology under government and industrial sponsorship.
"NanoMech could not have received this prestigious award without the tireless work of our world-class team of scientists, including Dr. Wenping Jiang, Vice President of Manufacturing,” Malshe said.
He also commended the National Science Foundations and the Environmental Protection Agency for their contributions over the years in support of nano technology.
Deborah Wince-Smith, CEO of the Council on Competitiveness and a member of NanoMech's Board of Directors, praised NanoMech for its innovative work.
"The ability to develop and deploy the most cutting-edge tools and products to bolster U.S. advanced manufacturing will deliver outsized benefits to the U.S. industrial base. NanoMech and TuffTek are at the leading edge of a resurgent U.S. manufacturing capability - on that is not dumb, dirty, dangerous and disappearing: but is smart, safe, sustainable and surging."