In today’s competitive manufacturing environment, investing in technology that enhances efficiency is crucial. Sand molding and coremaking departments are important areas of opportunity for foundries to gain advantages with new equipment. Three AFS Corporate Member foundries have made positive strides through deep strategic planning and sizeable investments to advance their positions in the metalcasting marketplace. The hard work and financial commitments are paying off for ATEK Metal Technologies, BCI Solutions Inc., and Manufacturers’ Brass & Aluminum Foundry.

Core Room Makeover

Within a one-year span, ATEK Metals, part of the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry family of companies, has recently completed significant improvements to its core room. Their $1.5+ million investment included three new Tinker Omega mixers, three new [brand name] knockout machines, as well as a second Laempe Reich coremaking machine––the LFB 25. A key driver behind the undertaking was a major customer’s new product launch requiring 400,000 cores per year.

“The Laempe has hugely benefited our core room. For this particular job, we are able to make over 100 pieces per hour,” said Director of Production Process Development Sairam Ravi. “It’s a four-cavity core box, and we’re making about 26 shots an hour.”  

In tandem with the equipment installations, a major part of the upgrade was an eight-month research project to solve the foundry’s chromite aggregate problem related to water jackets: Due to the their very thin section walls, cores were getting stuck in the castings, making shakeout a time-consuming ordeal that required drilling cores out manually. 

“We started off with some short trials with different types of ceramic sand … we chose the best-performing ones and then conducted extensive trials to figure out what material worked best,” said Ravi. “The customer was involved with this, because these cores affect the casting quality significantly. Along with that, we also switched core coatings––we stayed within the graphite family but switched to a different type of graphite coating, which really helped prevent the core from sticking to the casting.”

The new materials have reduced core-related casting scrap by over 50%, according to Ravi, and increased throughput by at least three times by eliminating the need to rework the castings––creating about $1 million in cost savings. Efficiency from the Laempe core machine has raised yield from about 60 pieces per hour to 104, which further increased cost savings in the core room. 

Executing on the Plan

BCI Solutions began planning expansion of its molding capacity during COVID; one driver was machine failure in some existing mold machinery, for which they could not acquire proprietary parts in a timely manner due to supply chain issues––and it cost them some customers. The foundry investigated three molding machine brands with key priorities in mind. After a two-and-a-half-year process, they have chosen a new DISA MATCH 20/24 for mold making, as well as Summit Foundry Systems Inc.for mold handling. Just days before Thanksgiving 2024, the company went live with the entire system.

“Our decision on the DISA had nothing to do with price,” said BCI Chairman JB Brown. “It was strictly about quality, reliability, consistency, future viability of the company, parts and service availability, ease of use, and new technology development. Right now, BCI is kind of a testing ground for different types of machines with two Hunters, a DISA, and a Sinto.”

Summit Foundry Systems served as general contractor for the combined project, having extensive experience installing DISAs and making them compatible with their mold handling line, Brown said.

“They have done a fantastic job,” Brown added. “We did a very deep investigation with them and visited multiple foundries––we think this is a great mold handling system for BCI. It’s also the second largest one Summit has ever done, and, at 210 mold cars, it’s massive. It’s taking us to a new level toward remaining competitive, domestically and internationally. We’ve pre-sold capacity to customers, and being an IATF-16949 registered, vertically-integrated supplier with an internal machine shop and an assembly division has opened up doors to make us a very diversified and unique supplier to OEMs.”

Brown said the pattern changing time and quality of casting finish has greatly improved with the DISA, and cooling time with their new mold handling line is also much better. “We’re going to go from one iron pour to two iron pours on this on this machine, and we’ll explore automation in the next couple years,” he said.

BCI expects an ROI for its all-in $6.5-million investment in two years.

Mold Handling with I4.0 Integration 

Manufacturers’ Brass & Aluminum Foundry (MBAF) recently made a $2- million upgrade to their green sand molding system, incorporating Sinto’s FBO-III automated mold handling system and Industry 4.0 integration. They report the upgrade has delivered significant improvements in efficiency, maintenance, and production. 

The new system has provided MBAF with access to real-time data on machine performance, fault detection, and cycle times. They said they’ve been able to address production issues more effectively––for example, by analyzing production reports, the foundry discovered a drop in its mold production during certain times––this insight enabled them take corrective actions, resulting in a 10% increase in production over several months of data collection. And because the smart software generates daily analytics reports, maintenance is able to track faults and their duration, pinpoint causes, and ultimately minimize downtime.

One of the biggest impacts of the Sinto Smart Foundry integration has been the ability to identify bottlenecks in the pouring process. Before the upgrade, Maintenance Project Manager Derek Wilken said they suspected pouring was causing idle time but they lacked concrete data. Today, they’ve successfully quantified the downtime between pours and justified increasing pouring capacity with clear ROI data. 

The cloud-based system also allows team members like Wilken to monitor multiple operations remotely.
“I always have an inside scoop on how the machine is running,” said Wilken, “which helps us stay ahead of any potential issues before they become big problems.”