IMT, Inc. celebrates 25th anniversary: colleagues honor company president.

The engines hum quietly as a wide-bodied airliner taxies toward the terminal. On board sits an elderly passenger who is coming home after a hip replacement operation.

Both the passenger and the aircraft share something in common--the benefits of advances in materials engineering that have occurred in the last two decades. The passenger's hip prosthesis and several of the airliner's large structural cast parts and engine turbine blades have been HIP'd (hot isostatically processed) by Industrial Materials Technology, Inc. (IMT).

In September, IMT celebrated its 25th anniversary as a leader in the materials engineering industry with a silver jubilee at company headquarters in Andover, Massachusetts. About 80 people from industry, universities, media and IMT attended.

The silver jubilee also included a reception honoring IMT President Robert Widmer, a plant open house and tours, and seminars on IMT and the HIPing process.

From its formation in 1968, IMT has grown into the largest HIP company in the U.S., with regional service centers in four states. During those years, Widmer helped IMT expand from a laboratory-sized operation in rented premises to a company that operates one of the world's largest hot isostatic presses in Andover (along with plants in three other states).

He started out by demonstrating the value of HIP to the aerospace industry. As revenues increased, IMT commissioned larger HIP units to serve its growing customer base.

The firm later experienced competition and a severe economic downturn that put it on the sale block. However, Widmer and his colleagues went after new markets and redeveloped the concepts of tailored materials. This action created solutions for industries needing to increase the performance of complex components without greatly raising production costs.