As a student at Bellmar High School in the 1950s, Thomas “Tom” Luzanski didn't participate in varsity athletic competition.
“I was sort of invisible,” Luzanski said from his home in Ida Township, a scenic and serene community of 5,000 in Michigan. “The only sports at that time were football and basketball and I was too small for both.”
Luzanski, a 1959 graduate of Bellmar, wasn't much bigger when he enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh in September of that year, but athletes played a major role in his course of studies – a decision that led to a long and successful career as a metallurgical engineer.
“It was perhaps a default choice,” Luzanski recalled. “I had chosen chemical engineering but that wasn't to be. Although Bellmar High School provided a good education, I wasn't well prepared for college as students from the large schools such as Mount Lebanon, Shady Side and Penn Hills. I quickly learned that if they had a chemistry class, they did actual lab work. At Bellmar we had only a demonstration by the teacher; there was no exposure to calculus, and English composition and creative writing weren't emphasized.
“So, as a freshman at Pitt, I really struggled academically and was going under. I just couldn't catch up and keep up.”
Enter John Maczuzak, a rugged 6-5, 250-pound All-State athlete from Ellsworth who played football and basketball at Pitt.
“John was my roommate that year and was there on a football scholarship,” Luzanski, 71, said. “He suggested that I join him and the other athletes for ‘Study Table.' All athletes on scholarship were provided tutors for every subject every evening. I thought that was quite a deal. I surely didn't look like a football player but I could pass for being on the track team. The tutors didn't really care as long as you wanted to learn. I took full advantage of John's invitation and survived my first two years. After that, chemistry lost its appeal and by a process of eliminating all other engineering disciplines I chose metallurgical engineering.”
To say the decision was a wise one would be an understatement.
Luzanski completed his studies for a bachelor of science degree in metallurgical engineering at Pitt on Aug. 15, 1963. Less than a month later, on Sept. 4, he was working at Ford Motor Company stamping plant in Monroe, Mich.
That was the start of a 49-year career of automotive materials engineering that continues today.
Luzanski's experience includes 16 years with Ford Motor Company as a general foreman/section supervisor, principal test engineer and research engineer and principal design engineer and group leader. He also worked in executive positions with Volkswagen of America (1980-1988), General Motors Saturn Corporation (1988-1999) and General Motors Corporation (1999-2008).
Luzanski retired from General Motors in August 2008 and moved to his current job with TWB Company (Tailor Welded Blanks) two years later.
“Just to keep up with technology and reconnect with old friends in the auto engineering business, I attended a yearly seminar, Great Designs In Steel, which is sponsored by all of the primary steelmakers in North America,” he said. “One of the new presentations highlighted a new application for laser welding, Tailor Welded Coils from TWB. I thought this was a great idea and wanted to be part of it.”
TWB was formed in 1992 as a joint venture between Thyssen Stahl AG and Worthington Industries. Headquartered in Monroe, Michigan, the firm is the leading steel processor in the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) region.
After a meeting with TWB's leadership, Luzanski joined the company as an engineering consultant, mostly to interact with the General Motors Vehicle Engineering Center on new product applications for tailor welded blanks and coils.
“In the beginning I worked mostly on Hot Form Blanks and Tailor Welded Coil applications,” he said. “But now the industry is undergoing a sea of change with the mandate for 54 mpg Café numbers by 2025. This forces a great change in design direction by the OEM's (original equipment manufacturers), domestic and transplant, to reduce vehicle mass.”
An approach to do this, led by luxury cars, Luzanski explained, is the use of aluminum sheet for closure components (doors, hoods, decks, gates). Steel door inner panel tailor welded blanks account for 45 percent of TWB's business, he said.
“To meet this threat/challenge we must learn to reliably weld aluminum sheet material with welds of sufficient strength to withstand the high strains produced from press forming complex shapes such as door inner panels,” Luzanski said.
Fusion welding – processes that melt metal – will not produce welds of adequate strength, he said. So a relatively new technology, Friction Stir Welding, developed and now required by the U.S. space program and most air frame fabricators is what Luzanski works on.
Friction Stir Welding is a solid-state joining process in which metal is not melted and it is used when the original metal characteristics must remain unchanged as much as possible.
“My current assignment is to apply this FSW technology to join differential thicknesses and alloys of thin gauge aluminum sheet to make aluminum blanks for press forming operations for automotive applications,” he said.
Luzanski, who earned a master's degree in business administration (MBA) from Eastern Michigan University in 1972, said the new Apple I-Mac also has introduced the Friction Stir Welding process. The company said that in creating Apple's thinnest desktop yet, “designers used the FSW technology to develop the aluminum body. Unlike arc welding, a friction stir just needs a good rubbing – and a few thousand kilos of pressure – to stick together.”
“It's an amazing process,” Luzanski said.
Attending the University of Pittsburgh also brought Pamela Roberta Frazier, the daughter of Robert and Irma Neff Frazier of White Oak (McKeesport), into Luzanski's life.
“We met at an engineers' dance at the Student Union my senior year at Pitt,” said Luzanski, the son of the late George and Anna Irene Jurasko Luzanski of Lynnwood.
Pamela was a student at the McKeesport Hospital School of Nursing at the time.
“It was an interesting situation at Pitt in those days,” Luzanski recalled. “The liberal arts ‘Betty Coeds' and sorority sisters would never associate with any engineering students. We were the nerds, wore pocket protectors with mechanical pencils in them and carried 12-inch slide rules hitched to our belts. These were the days before calculators. Because the Pitt girls viewed us a academic heathens, we had to advertise and import young ladies from the surrounding nursing schools. Nurses knew that the engineers, although quirky, were solid guys with a future.”
Tom and Pam were married on Nov. 7, 1964, at St. Sebastian Roman Catholic Church in Belle Vernon and recently celebrated their 48th wedding anniversary.
They are the parents of two daughters, Kimberly Ann (Kim) Luzanski, 46, and Nicole Irene (Nikki) Luzanski, 40.
Ron Paglia is a freelance writer for Trib Total Media.
