Great Lakes Bay Manufacturers Association Newsletter - March 2021 Our Member Spot this month is Bernier Cast Metals, Inc. They are a successful family business that initially started out as Model Aluminum Foundry in 1945. At the time it was Saginaw’s only foundry dealing exclusively in aluminum castings. Core driers were the main production item and were purchased by local foundries in the…
During the early stages of solidification of a casting, a thin skin begins to form at the relatively cool mold walls and as time passes, the thickness of the skin increases (as shown in figure 2). For flat mold walls, thickness is proportional to the square root of the solidification time. Thus, doubling the solidification time will make the skin 21/2 = 1.414 times or…
The story of metal casting begins some five and a half thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilisation. The process, which involves pouring molten metal into a mould, was used by the Mesopotamians to create all manner of things including tools and weaponry, typically out of the copper — tin alloy, bronze. Civilisation had finally dragged itself out…
The general sources of receiving molding sands are the sea shores, rivers, lakes, deserts and granular elements of rocks. Molding sands can be classified mainly into two types namely natural or synthetic. Natural molding sands contains sufficient amount of binder material. Whereas synthetic molding sands are prepared artificially using basic sand molding constituents (silica sand in 85-91%, binder 6-11%, water or…
Casting is also known as foundering, is the oldest manufacturing process in which liquid molten metal is poured into a perforated casting cavity of refractory material. Allow liquid metal to solidify, after solidification the casting metal can be taken out by breaking the mold. The casting process is used to produce components such as pistons, mill rolls, wheels, cylinder blocks, liners,…
We break down the U.S. metalcasting industry by metal, process, state, and value-added services. Using data gathered from a nationwide survey of the U.S. metal casters, Modern Casting can paint a picture of the industry in 2017. The data was compiled from a survey of 1,633 domestic metal casting facilities, 84% if the country's estimated 1,949 plants in 2017. Following is a…
The well-worn colloquialism, “Think Global, Act Local,” has been around for over 100 years. Different groups such as city planners, environmentalists, and even corporations have adopted the expression to encourage behavior and describe their engagement philosophy. The underlying message is that it is important to have a long term or big picture goal, but action needs to take place where…
Manufactured products, particularly foundry products, cannot reach their intended market without the labor of humans. That means there is always an opportunity for issues related to employment and labor to come to the fore and perhaps steal attention away from the critical operational issues of the foundry in favor of employment or labor issues. Indeed, manufacturers are often prime targets…
The metalcasting industry is always moving ahead. Whether it’s how to pour the purest metal, produce components with as little scrap as possible, or plunge into additive manufacturing, when foundries look for ways to push into the future, they’re successful. Then it should not be a surprise that the industry is working to make sure there won’t be a shortage…
As the American Foundry Society rolled out its annual economic forecast in January, the numbers were more encouraging than in recent years. AFS is projecting sales growth of 4.7% in 2018, followed by another 1.8% growth in 2019, for the overall market. Coming on the heels of an estimated 2.7 percent growth in 2017, the industry is looking at its…
