As engineers and materials buyers, you know the feeling: You have a brilliant design, a prototype that should work on paper, but you hit a wall. The material specification you need just doesn’t exist in a standard catalog.

At Belmont Metals, while we are proud of our inventory of over 3,000 standard compositions, we know that innovation rarely happens within the confines of a drop-down menu. This month, we are stepping away from stock products to highlight the heart of our technical expertise: Bespoke Metallurgy and Research & Development.

More Than a Warehouse—A Laboratory

We don’t just supply metal; we understand metal. Our R&D department exists to bridge the gap between your theoretical needs and physical reality. We partner with university research teams, government labs, and private enterprise R&D departments to develop custom alloys tailored to singular applications.

Whether you need to recreate a lost historical formula or solve a critical failure rate in modern manufacturing, our metallurgists are ready to collaborate.

Success Story: The Paktong Puzzle

A fascinating example of our work involved resurrecting Paktong, an ancient “lost” alloy of copper, nickel, and zinc that resembles silver.

The Problem: A well-established antiquities company wanted to duplicate a Chinese casting from 1720. They enlisted Oxford University to analyze the original artifact, but when they tried to cast the formula derived from the analysis, it failed. The color was wrong, and the castability was poor.

The Belmont Solution: Our team realized that the chemical analysis of the final artifact didn’t tell the whole story. The original formula required specific trace elements to act as grain refiners and color enhancers—elements that had likely burned off or segregated during the original casting process. We reverse-engineered the process as well as the metal, creating a corrected formula.

The Result: The customer was finally able to cast beautiful candelabras with the correct historical color and consistency, launching a successful product line in Milan, Paris, and New York.

Success Story: The Watchmaker’s Dilemma

In a more modern application, a premier watch manufacturer faced a crisis with their brass bezels.

The Problem: The tiny pins protruding from the bezels (which hold the strap) were snapping off. The failure rate was a staggering 50%, threatening their production capabilities.

The Belmont Solution: We worked closely with the manufacturer to engineer a new “red metal” alloy. The goal was to increase ductility without sacrificing the specific color requirements or castability of the original alloy.

The Result: The new custom alloy dropped the failure rate from 50% to less than 1%. This custom formulation has since become a staple in the industry.

Don’t Compromise Your Design

If you are currently modifying your design to fit the limitations of available materials, stop. Let us try to modify the material to fit your design.

We are equipped to handle everything from small-batch R&D samples (5-10 lbs) to full-scale production.

Bring us your toughest material challenges. Let’s invent the solution together