Artistic tendencies abound in metalcasting. After all, who hasn’t heard people in the industry refer to their manufacturing process as both an art and a science?

But for the most part, the artistic talents one finds in metalcasting facilities tend toward the visual arts. The ability to imagine solid metal pieces solidified of molten material is one that lends itself to the creation of sculpture, paintings and other decorative pieces.

Sam Ramrattan—if he’ll excuse the use of one of his own puns—breaks the mold. The industrial and manufacturing engineering professor in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Western Michigan Univ., Kalamazoo, Mich., is a part-time poet. At the 113th Metalcasting Congress in Las Vegas, Ramrattan took the opportunity of receiving an AFS Award of Scientific Merit to regale the audience with a poem he penned for the occasion. Following is the metalcaster poet’s work; be on the lookout for a number of clever industry puns like the one above:

THE FOUNDRYMAN
by Sam Ramrattan

A spell was cast using fire and ore.
Giants walked among men.
A profession since the sands of time;
A Foundry Society bonded with inclusions of art and science.

From Ages of Bronze and Iron, through an Industrial Revolution;
Plows, cannons, bells and engines; shaped by Masters.
Malleable minds molded in their image; we tap their reservoirs.
The die was cast; Foundrymen made of the same mold.

Safe: The noise our music;
The sparks our fireworks;
The danger our excitement;
Man of steel: Superman or Foundryman?

Arising from out of a crucible.
Ancient process, modern methods;
An industry in continual flux,
The Foundryman a catalyst for change.

Pegged as polluters, what a drag!
Hardened by Standards we cope.
Tempered with the fact that we are our civilization’s first recyclers.
Cladded with the materials of a possible future;
The Foundryman’s love etched in my mind.

If you still haven’t heard about Twitter, not only do you live under a rock, it’s one of the world’s few remaining rocks without internet access.

While we at MODERN CASTING haven’t started posting our happenings on the newest social media site, we can’t get through a day without some new guru coming to us claiming to be the first to “know how to get the most out of Twitter.” You, too, have probably been bombarded with information about Twittering, Tweeting, micro-blogging, and all the rest.

But alas, the metalcasting industry lags behind. Try plugging “metalcasting” or “foundry” into the Twitter search bar. You won’t find much that is relevant to or representative of our industry.

Enter the innovators. Concurrently with their attendance of this year’s Paris Air Show, rapid prototyping gurus Clinkenbeard, Rockford, Ill., have launched both a new blog and a Twitter page. The company says it will use the outlets to “communicate with customers, prospects, the Rockford business community, and the media.”

“We are encouraging our customers and prospects to participate and hope that other Rockford companies and organizations, as well as the media, will join the conversation,” said Ron (Reg) Gustafson Jr., a project manager for the company, in a press release about the launches.

Twitter may not be for your company, but online communication offers innumerable opportunities to connect with your customers. So get that rock you’re under wired for access, and start sending out your message.

Waterworks metalcasters often have unique customer lists.

EBAA Iron Co., Eastland, Texas, for example, sells its line of water pipe restraint products primarily through wholesale distribution centers, such as Ferguson Underground and HD Supply (Home Depot’s wholesale arm). Contractors purchase the products from those locations and use them in their projects. (Check out this article in MODERN CASTING for more information on EBAA Iron.)

And according to Contractor magazine, Charlotte Pipe and Foundry, Charlotte, N.C., operates similarly. The magazine points to a recent episode of the seminal “This Old House,” in which contractor Richard Trethewey uses the metalcaster’s pipes and fittings in a plumbing repair project. Trethewey doesn’t mention the metalcaster by name, but if Contractor is correct, you can see the product in the four minute video here.

If you’re unable to stream video on your computer, we’ll ruin the suspense—Trethewey successfully installs the Charlotte Pipe parts and leaves the old house working like new.

One of our editors got a chance to talk with a friend this weekend who sells chain for industrial applications. He counts several metalcasters as customers, but we already knew that. That’s not what we found particularly interesting in the conversation on Sunday.

Our friend is in the business of selling manufactured metal components, just like we are in the metalcasting industry. And two things immediately became apparent in our short discussion about business. First, our friend knew exactly how his product is made. Second, he knew all about the markets he serves. He easily described the manufacturing process behind his products and came off sounding like someone you could trust when purchasing a manufactured good. And he knew who was using his chain and who might benefit from his chain.

This is Sales 101, but it never hurts to reiterate that if you’re involved in the metalcasting industry in some capacity away from the manufacturing floor, that does not let you off the hook from knowing how the process operates. And if you’re on the manufacturing floor, you should be on the hook for knowing what the heck you’re making and where your products will end up.

If someone in your organization is in need of a refresher course on the metalcasting process, send them over to www.metalcastingdesign.com, where the editors of our sister publication Metal Casting Design and Purchasing (formerly ECS) have put together a great collection of information on the basics of metalcasting.

We in the metalcasting industry don’t sell chain, but we can stay educated up and down the production chain.

Finally, the metalcasting industry gets some quality play for the efforts it’s making to be more environmentally friendly.

In a recent article in the New York Times, decorative investment caster SA Baxter, Chester, N.Y., is heralded as one of a number of metalcasting facilities that has introduced green practices. Per the article:

At Baxter’s factory…no lead is used, no wastewater is produced, almost no emissions are released into the atmosphere, and many of the materials used are recycled.

Of course, at least part of that statement (“many of the materials used are recycled”) is true of basically every metalcasting facility in the country—heck, the world—but we’ll take the praise where we can get it. What’s more, the generally left-leaning NYT does go on to implicate some of the rest of the industry:

Baxter is not the only foundry using cleaner techniques. Makers of products like auto parts, jet engines and medical devices use some of the same technology. But the companies often do not sell directly to consumers and are not necessarily marketed as green.

Again, we’d like to protest the last part of that statement, but it’s good to see our hard-working industry getting a green thumbs-up.

For metalcasters immersed in making castings day after day, the unique design capabilities of the process can be taken for granted, until you come across a customer who is blown away by what can be achieved by pouring molten metal in a mold. This year’s Casting of the Year, which was awarded at the AFS Metalcasting Congress last week and will be featured in the May issue of MODERN CASTING, was such a success, it made not just a casting believer but a casting lover out of its customer.

Although Polaris Industries, a maker of snowmobiles, ATVs and motorcycles, had sourced castings to prototype specialist Craft Pattern and Mold before, its most recent project, a cast aluminum component for the frame of a concept motorcycle, was a unique application. Converted from a steel fabrication, it integrated 20 parts into a single piece and helped the motorcycle designers achieve the minimalist concept that was the inspiration behind the whole project.

When our editors spoke with Greg Brew, director of industrial design at Polaris, he had plenty to say about the advantages of the casting process.

“You have this great medium that doesn’t hold you back when you want to do just a really crazy shape,” He told us. “It can do things that would be a headache in any other medium. I just love it.”

The judges love it too. Congratulations to Craft Pattern of Maple Plain, Minn., for producing this year’s Casting of the Year. 

And here we thought we were the only news outlet sharing videos of the metalcasting facility tours we do around the country.

In a recent equipment spotlight, Golf Digest and NBC Sports looked at the different kinds of irons used by golfers and how they are made. The five-minute video the magazine editors produced highlights primarily cavity back irons, which are made in the investment casting process.

In the course of its research for the piece, Golf Digest visited Dolphin Precision Investment Castings, Phoenix, Ariz. The video includes shots from the facility’s yard, wax room, melting and pouring areas, shakeout, and finishing room.

Investment casting is used to produce cacvity back irons because forging, the other primary iron-producing process, simply cannot match the ability of the casting process to produce forgiving irons with deeply inset back cavities, often with undercuts. For more information on the difference between the irons created by the two processes, check out the article “Metalcasting Works Fore Golfers” in the October 2007 issue of MODERN CASTING.

Despite the numerous clichés warning of the perils of assuming (most of them not clean enough for print), we have to make some assumptions in the magazine business. We make assumptions about our readership every day, and the accuracy of those assumptions reflects on how good our product turns out to be.

In a reversal of roles, it can benefit you to make some assumptions about the media. Specifically, assume they don’t know a cope from the Copacabana or green sand from the Green Lantern. You also can assume they need some help in seeing the metalcasting industry as anything other than a dirty, old-fashioned manufacturing process.

Fortunately, the American Foundry Society offers an online resource for metalcasters looking to help out the know-nothing mainstream media. Under the “Media” tab in the main menu at www.afsinc.org, you’ll find some tips on dealing with the media, as well as a newly updated photo gallery with images ready for publication.

If the media member you’re dealing with doesn’t need pictures for print, send them the link to the gallery anyway. Browsing the images is an easy way to get to know some of the processes that we in the industry take as assumed knowledge.

And remember: assumption makes an a…Wait. That cliché still isn’t clean enough to print.
 

In most of the casting facilities we visit, we are shown various levels of “lean manufacturing” efforts. Sometimes the results are easy to see, other times the changes are too subtle for the casual observer to notice. During our tours, we’ll often hear different versions of what lean manufacturing actually is, usually explained with generic terms and too often with unclear goals. It can seem like lean manufacturing has become a brochure term with little real meaning on the shop floor.

That’s not to say implementing lean isn’t a worthwhile venture, or that many metalcasters aren’t seeing good results from a lean program. In the upcoming April issue of MODERN CASTING, we will try to de-mystify “lean” and give tips from lean gurus, industry experts and metalcasters on how to apply it—profitably—to your job shop.

Many shops are already taking advantage of the extra downtime from the current recession to start housekeeping and organizational projects associated with lean manufacturing. It’s a smart idea. The true test will be how the program is continued as jobs begin to filter back in and production ramps up. After all, the crux of lean is continuous improvement.

But continuous improvement has to start somewhere. If you haven’t already, use the extra time available right now wisely by starting up a lean initiative. You don’t have to call it lean, but it should involve charting the flow of your facility to identify bottlenecks, inventory pileups or other inefficiencies in the process. Put meaning behind your efforts and sell it to your employees with conviction. The result could be a well-run metalcasting facility read to meet the next influx of customer demands as the recession ebbs.

For starters, below are a few resources that may help you start leaning your facility. Some have been suggested by sources for the upcoming article in MODERN CASTING, others have been uncovered during the research process.

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Development–A business novel illustrating many of the principles behind lean manufacturing.

The Toyota Way–Explains the principles of Toyota’s method of manufacturing, considered to be forefront of the modern lean manufacturing method.

Lean Manufacturing Systems and Cell Design–Manufacturing experts explain how cellular systems comprise the foundation of the entire lean implementation process.

"Best Cleaning & Finishing Operations–2001," MODERN CASTING, Jan. 2001, p. 32–Three metalcasters illustrate how they streamlined their cleaning and finishing departments.

Is it just us, or does Facebook seem to be in the news a lot lately? The most recent item we’ve seen is the assertion by a British neuroscientist that Facebook and other social networking sites will result in “infantilized” minds in the 21st Century.

Chicago Tribune also posted a blog entry Tuesday on tips for giving up Facebook during Lent.

Feels like Facebook is invading the entire universe. Well, now metalcasting is invading Facebook. Our staff has created its very own Facebook page for MODERN CASTING magazine. Check us out here. You can become a fan of the page if you’re already one of the thousands of “infantilized” minds logged into Facebook (hey-we’re not judging, we’re regressing along with you.)

In all seriousness, we do feel like entering into the online networking realm is beneficial to establishing a community among our readers. So log on and see what our staff and other metal heads in the industry are up to. We’ve also created a group in LinkedIn, a more business-oriented online networking group. Go here to check it out. You’ll have to be a LinkedIn member to view more of this group’s page.

See you online.