Forging an Alliance

Wolverine Bronze, Anderson Global and Ashland Performance Materials all believe that OEMs today have a greater need for outsourced casting design for manufacturing, prototyping and process development. It is in response to those needs they say they formed their alliance and began building the casting development facility that is part of Wolverine Bronze’s Roseville facilities.

The alliance’s first customer, the OEM car company, contracted with the group to perform research and development work on its new products, thus providing enough business to kickstart the operation. Since then, the alliance has begun business development activities to make the operation profitable and sustainable.

The three companies began the project by building a greenfield metalcasting facility with all the requirements and capabilities to serve a wide range of companies needing prototype castings, design for manufacturing assistance, process development and limited production castings.

The three companies pooled their resources and purchased a large core machine designed for the production of intricate core packages most commonly seen in production engine cylinder block and head facilities. They also installed a low pressure pouring line that simulates an automated process while being manipulated by an operator through a robot, and several semi-permanent mold machines. The equipment was operational by 2008, and the first products through the plant were engine blocks and heads.

According to Smith, the purpose of the development plant is to optimize casting processes in an experimental setting before production work is moved to a facility capable of producing the high volumes of parts required by large OEMs. Anderson Global works with the customer on the tooling side of the process, optimizing the tooling design for castability. Ashland Performance Materials provides support on design for manufacturing, optimizing materials, documenting sand and binder formulation, and providing modeling support. Wolverine Bronze provides the casting process expertise.

“The [metalcasting plant] is the high tech equivalent of a production intent facility,” said Ryan Nielsen, project manager for the developmental shop. “The equipment is all designed to duplicate production intent. You can put the recipes and production processes right into a production plant.”

Essentially, the development facility is a proving ground for OEMs and metalcasting facilities to work through the kinks in the casting process for a new product without devoting space in a production plant for the same purpose. The alliance doesn’t make high volume production castings; it makes good casting processes and delivers that formula to the customer. According to Anderson Global President John McIntyre, the alliance also can step in to assist OEMs in finding a metalcaster capable of producing parts in a production method similar to that derived from the development plant and assist that metalcaster as needed with start-up of production.

“The idea is to facilitate bringing new production into existing metalcasting facilities,” McIntyre said.

According to Gregory MacIver, director of global marketing for Ashland Performance Materials, the alliance is designed to enhance the metalcasting supply chain in a novel way, assisting companies at various points throughout the process of delivering production castings.

“There’s a compatible philosophy among the three companies that is directed toward bringing value to the metalcasting field,” he said.