Toolmaking—also known as patternmaking—remains central to the foundry process and one of the keys to quality castings, yet in this critical area many foundries now find themselves vulnerable.

“Tooling design is really key for manufacturability and cost,” said Todd Pagel, vice president of operations at AFS Corporate Member Waupaca Foundry, one of the largest iron foundries in the world. “You can design a tool in many ways, and they may all produce the same casting, but how that casting is produced is determined by how the tooling is built and by looking at the best ways to part a mold and how to core a casting.” 

Sid Tankersley, an AFS Board Member and president at AFS Corporate Member American Foam Cast, based in Sylacauga, Alabama, brought the issue of extended lead times and difficulty finding pattern-shops to Modern Casting. “For everyone I talk to, it’s an issue,” he said. The specialized lost foam casting process used at his foundry requires a Styrofoam pattern, and according to Tankersly, there are a limited number of shops that do this work. Some shops are having difficulty finding tool makers, while others have gone out of business.” 

“There are fewer and fewer pattern venders,” said David Scott, director of lean operations for Waupaca Foundry.  “We’ve had some struggles with lead times and completions of projects on time. We’ve seen some price points go up as well.”

“We were making tools for one of our customers and our toolmaker went bankrupt,” said Sachin Shivaram, CEO of AFS Corporate Member Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry (WAF), headquartered in Manitowoc. “We were worried about not just our ability, but the whole industry’s ability, to service our customers at a time when I think we’re at an inflection point.” 

“The whole casting and pattern industry has been cannibalizing itself,” said Matt Brower, vice president and general manager of Anderson Global, which is a division of WAF. “Now we’ve reached the point where that has slowed down.”  

“Many of our seasoned colleagues are retiring and very few young people are interested in precision trades,” said Keith Gerber, president of AFS Corporate Member Hoosier Pattern in Decatur, Indiana. This, along with growing demand, pushes us toward new technology and better software allowing us to do more with less. Still, losing one employee now can have a deep impact.” 

 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of patternmakers in metal and plastic dropped 69% from 2007 to 2023. In 2023, 38% of patternmakers were employed in foundries, the largest segment. While the industry now encompasses additional roles of machinists and tool designers, the statistics are worrisome. 

How Foundries Have Responded

As a result of their experience, Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry purchased Anderson Global in March 2025. The large Michigan-based mold design and manufacturing facility employs 55 journeyman patternmakers and produces a variety of molds and sand-casting patterns, including permanent molds.  While Anderson Global currently produces about 10% of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry tooling, it remains a separate business unit, supporting the entire foundry industry. 

Waupaca Foundry is responding to the shortage of patternmakers by growing its in-house tooling capabilities. It aims to produce 40% of its tooling in-house, up from 10%.  

For foundries that outsource tooling, there are fewer options. “Many small and medium size foundries are privately owned and located in somewhat rural areas,” said AFS Technical Director Travis Frush. “They just don’t have the overhead resources and local supply of this highly skilled workforce to support and maintain an in-house tooling department.”

“We often talk about foundries being job shops, and tooling is a job shop on steroids,” said Shivaram. “There’s almost no repeatability.”  

According to Gerber, only three to four out of their 20 foundry customers have in-house tooling capabilities. Hoosier specializes in models for sand casting. 

“If you’re not always making new tools, it’s hard to have a fully robust, in-house tool shop,” said Gerber. “Tooling has been increasingly outsourced over the past several decades, and certainly it’s been accelerated in the recent past.”

Tooling Trade Evolution

Over the past four decades, tooling has evolved from hand-made patterns carved out of wood. “It’s much less of an art form and more of a precision engineering approach toward making a tool,” said Scott at Waupaca. Modern tooling uses computer-aided design (CAD) software, then is precisely cut, drilled, and milled from metal using computer-aided machining (CAM) software and CNC machines. Finally, the tooling is hand polished, reassembled, prepared for molding, and inspected. Advances in CNC machining as well as 3D printing have decreased the need for hand work.

“With better machine technology, cutters, and materials, we have been able to decrease our hand benching by 35%-40%,” said Gerber. 

According to Gerber, 3D sand printing has been “a game changer.” It now represents 55% of the pattern shop’s business. “Not only did it open up more doors for hard tooling but it advanced my revenue,” he said.  Foundries primarily use 3D printed sand molds for prototypes and small batches.  

“Rather than make a corebox, we 3D print the core just so that we can get preliminary engineering samples off to a customer faster,” said Scott.  Waupaca is also using FDM (fused deposition modeling) or SLA-type (stereolithography) printing to produce components of a tool.

“Additive manufacturing, even combined with subtractive manufacturing, is going to reshape the patternmaking process even further in the coming years,” Scott added. 

Industry At a Tipping Point

Higher demand at patternshops has brought challenges for foundries. This past summer, Hoosier Pattern increased its lead time to 12-14 weeks (up from 8-10 weeks). According to Gerber, shutting down their apprentice program during COVID caused some challenges, but they are actively recruiting for both their four-year apprenticeship program and non-apprentice positions.  “How we keep our customers is by building a good tool, and when we say, “On time delivery—we mean it,” he added. 

“Over the last quarter, we’ve seen a significant uptick in quoting activity, and an increase in wins,” said Pagel. “That has put pressure not only on David and his team for our internal builds, but with all of our patternmakers.”

“Your customers don’t want to hear about long lead time,” said Tankersley, who has always outsourced tooling. “What scares me is the people who are experts are having a difficult time finding people.” 

Examining Solutions

A.Buy a tooling company. 

Companies with a significant amount of work and capital to invest can purchase the talent and equipment they need, like WAF did with Anderson Global. While this solution isn’t for every foundry, it’s worth examining how large pattern companies are successfully attract talent to their businesses. 

Anderson Global draws interns from Muskegon Community College where there is a patternmaking program.

“There’s the culture of Western Michigan, Grand Rapids, and Muskegon,” said Shivaram. “All these places have a real history in toolmaking.” 

In addition, Michigan has invested heavily in technical education. “There are many people at Anderson Global who did something totally different in their careers, and then, through the help of the state, they went back to school to became patternmakers,” Shivaram continued.

Unions also provide training and ensure competitive wages and benefits. “We really haven’t had trouble finding workers,” said Brower. “We pay high wages, offer air-conditioned working conditions, and it’s a high-skill, high-tech job.”

B.Increase the percentage of tools produced in-house. With approximately 400 tools produced per year, Waupaca Foundry has the volume that an in-house tooling program requires. But it requires a significant investment in capital and people. When completed, Waupaca will add seven more CNC machines, (12 total) and bolster their tooling team from eight to 23. They are using a wide variety of tactics to recruit, from social media platforms like TikTok to job boards and head-hunter firms. 

“We also rely on networking within our industry,” said Scott. This includes working with local high schools, technical schools, national and state chapters of AFS, as well as Foundry Educational Foundation schools.  

A Waupaca machining apprenticeship program, started five years ago, is helping fill the tooling talent pipeline. Participants receive an associate’s degree in CNC machining by attending classes at Fox Valley Technical College and Mid-State Technical College for a period of two years, while working a minimum of 10 hours a week and full time over summer breaks. 

“Students get hands on experience at the tech college and working with experienced employees on site,” said Scott. Upon completing the program, employees are placed in one of the three tooling roles.  

Outsourcing Best Practices

Outsourcing tooling offers many benefits to foundries including little to no capital investment. It also places the challenge of finding toolmakers into the hands of those who are probably best equipped for it. What’s key is choosing the right partner. 

Not all pattern shops are struggling. In fact, most of the pattern shops interviewed for this story are thriving. AFS Corporate Member Liberty Pattern, which targets customers in aerospace, aircraft, defense, agricultural, and automotive, has grown from a two-bay service station in 1981 to a 75,000-sq.-ft. facility today. 3D sand printing represents approximately half of the company’s business, which is located in New Liberty, Iowa. 

According to Liberty Vice President Nick Caldwell, two to three apprentices come through the company’s five-year apprenticeship program each year. Caldwell recognizes they are up against other trades for talent and acknowledges salaries and benefits must be competitive. 

Caldwell highlights the value of working with a tooling supplier that can deliver production, hybrid, and fully-additive tooling. “Integrating 3D printing along with 3D sand printing into the tooling process has significantly enhanced efficiency and reduced lead times, enabling quicker turnaround times for our customers,” he said.

Matt Brower from Anderson Global cautions foundries to not go with the cheapest shop. “If a shop is cheap, they might have the machine, but they can’t provide you with that expertise,” he said. “If they don’t have journeymen, you might have flaws in design that can cause issues in production. “When we build it, you get something that is going to work.”

Shivaram suggests building an ongoing relationship with tooling providers. 

“Keep them abreast of what you’re working on and what might be coming down the pipeline so that your toolmaker can reserve capacity,” he said. “Collaborate on engineering and get early insights on manufacturability that you can share with your customer. Treating your toolmaker like an extension of your own company is probably a good way to go.”

Getting Creative and Collaborative 

Onshoring may be the catalyst for the tooling labor problem, but for years, in areas where there’s a concentration of foundries, such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, a local ecosystem provides coremaking, toolmaking, machine shops, and foundries. “Those are the places where you see the talent and probably the more successful foundries,” said Shivaram.  

Apprenticeships are key to growing the specific talents required in the tooling trade.

“I encourage every patternshop that’s out there to get into apprenticeships,” said Gerber.  “If we don’t keep educating and having more apprentices become patternmakers, this industry will die.”

Highlighting the tooling problem, sharing best practices for attracting talent, and understanding the needs of patternshops and foundries are the first steps toward solving today’s tooling crisis.