Revolutionary Iron Man

Revolutionary Iron Man

Frank Masyada has developed a

technology to make metal stronger and it may revolutionize many products.

Imagine not having to change your brakes for years. Or grabbing your driver and hitting the golf ball straighter and longer every time.

These are your existing brakes and clubs. But they have been put through a thermal cycling process that strengthens them, a process Frank Masyada has invented, patented and has built a Largo company around.

Masyada, 60, is the chief executive and founder of Thermal Technology Services Inc., a company that enhances the strength of metal using a temperature-changing process. When the molecules in metal are exposed to their extreme temperatures, they can be reorganized, resulting in an improvement in the metal's wear resistance and durability and increased strength and performance.

While seemingly revolutionary for many industries, including aircraft, automotive, construction, manufacturing, military, railway and surgical, Thermal is focusing on two markets: brakes on municipal vehicles, such as school buses and police cars, and golf clubs.

Its strategy is to build plants in high-population states to provide them with the service. A subsidiary of Thermal, Harmonic Footprinting LLC, measures metal fatigue in bridges and other metal structures.

Publicity about Thermal's process has caused controversy. Gulf club maker Calloway threatened to sue Masyada after hearing his comments about the quality of Calloway's products on television. Then it wanted to do a deal. He refused.

Besides its office and production facility in Largo, Thermal has an office in Melbourne, Australia for golf club treatment. Masyada travels to the company facility in Michigan to train employees in brake treatment.

Thermal is limiting its work to golf clubs and brakes because it can only treat so many metal products.

There are 462,000 school buses in the United States, about 18,000 in Florida. Cities are cash strapped. But when Thermal guarantees they will save 50% on brakes, they usually buy the process.

The company needs about $80 million to build brake treatment plants in other high-population states, so it wants to go public next year. Demand is outstripping Thermal's infrastructure.

"If someone put all the money in the world on my desk, we couldn't do what we want to do," Masyada says.

At its Harmonic Convergence subsidiary, major oil companies are talking to the company about its product. Some applications include bridges, oil rigs and pipelines.

Masyada, an entrepreneur who serviced and maintained recovery radar for NASA's Gemini program, was running another company in Boston before moving to Florida to help his son recover from cancer surgery.

The biggest challenge for the company has been managing growth. His biggest lesson as CEO is learning how difficult it is to get funding and how difficult it is to slow down growth.

"If you try to everything, you don't do anything well," Masyada says.

Thermal has 11 employees in Florida and seven in Michigan. By April, it expects to have about 45 in Florida and 25 in Michigan.

The brake and golf club treatment process is done by computer after the brakes and clubs go into a machine. For about 200 brake rotors, the process takes about 30 hours. It can treat 300 to 400 clubs in 18 hours.

Revenues this year should end up around $600,000. But next year, Masyada expects them to jump as high as $40 million.

That's because a major bus manufacturer wants Thermal to supply brakes for all of their buses, which should push its production to 70,000 to 80,000 brakes per month by April. It is now doing a couple hundred a month.

It is negotiating contracts with other companies, such as a beverage maker with many trucks. Looking ahead, Thermal's goal is to capture 80% of the U.S. school bus and police car brake market.

- Dave Szymanski