THE BREAKTHROUGHS THAT
CHANGED FOUNDRIES FOREVER—
BORN FROM OUR INDUSTRY
By Jerry Senk, President of Equipment Manufacturers International, Inc.
ARTICLE TAKEAWAYS:
- Key innovations that reshaped foundry operations
- Shows how real-world ideas from the shop floor drove change
A simple solution indeed. Where do these innovations come from, how are they formed, designed, tested, articulated, built, and marketed in a timely enough fashion to even be relevant to the ever-changing landscape?
Where do the analytic or predictive instincts come from—the ones that narrow variation and lead to truly unique solutions in the foundry? When you look back to the Bronze Age, we’re talking about practices dating as far back as 2500–3000 B.C. Foundry work has deep roots in tradition—arguably one of the most conservative industries, with a historically flat trajectory when it comes to change. Against that backdrop, it’s remarkable to see the incremental but meaningful advances made in just the past 50 years.
To be fair, I would certainly think we could all agree with the generalization that foundries are conservative and methodical, and change could almost be measured in glacial terms. I remember discussions with General Motors foundry managers about ideas, and they told me that their preference is not to be first, but most certainly they will be second in line when it works.
When I started at EMI almost 40 years ago, the company was pursuing a vision of acquiring businesses that had been bypassed by advancing European technology or were remnants of the conglomerate era of the 1970s and ’80s—when large corporations believed that owning a wide range of unrelated businesses would shield them from market fluctuations. That strategy came crashing down after the “real Great Recession” of 1980–1982.
My first impression of monumental change was the conversion of foundry equipment to a PLC platform. I can recall the relay panels and stepper switches, as well as the hours of downtime on a large mold line due to a faulty wire, limit switch, or other failure that was trouble shot by an experienced maintenance person with much tribal knowledge.
With the addition of programmable controllers, this was a game changer in not only diagnostics, but quick-change tooling, proportional controls, LVDT positioning control (anyone remember a Temposonic?), HMI’s and led to capabilities necessary for the fastest performing machinery in the foundry industry due to real time feedback and repeatable precision.
When we acquired Osborn, we inherited file rooms filled with decades of data—records, test results, design work, and developments accumulated over more than 80 years. Case Western Reserve had conducted a significant amount of testing, and after World War II, they were brought in— along with Acme Hill—to investigate the shell sand process abroad and help bring that technology to the U.S.
I had the opportunity to read through volumes of patents, where copies on all of the foundry related developments of competitors and foundrymen alike were tracked. I remember seeing Taccome molding machines where an air bladder was used as a versatile compaction squeeze head. Hunter patents started in earnest in the early 1960’s.
I read about different machine designs, multiple stations, core machines, molding machines, B&P patents for match blowmatic machines. Everyone who was anyone had patents applied for. There were metallurgical recipes, heat treating, cooling, and mixing, reclamation. What an era for sure, and I am sure it was supplemented with more trade secrets.
One of the last projects that Osborn was working on was their 19MPLS machine. This machine was going to take the flaskless B&P molding machine, and stick it into a tight flask molding line. This never came to fruitation other than a large R&D machine in our plant.
EMI purchased SPOmatic molding machines and Milwaukee Briquetting presses from ABB in 1990. I found that the SPO part of the name came from 3 engineers from Osborn who wanted to design a molding machine that utilized gravity and compensation squeeze heads, with a cross loop continuous mold pallet line. The timing and synchronizing of these mold lines reached up to 300 mph.
Before the sale, SPO and CECAST were holding on hopes of securing a Lost Foam project at Saturn, which was lost to Vulcan. Vulcan at one time was a powerhouse, and they definitely dominated Lost Foam. Since CECAST has the technology, I made an effort to visit some of their customers and understand this process and see if we wanted to compete in this area.
After going through the visits, the pre-expansion of foam, the blowing of foam, the curing of foam, the different sizes of foam parts in a tree, the slurries, the dipping, the whole process needed a chemical engineer, and the mechanical side was pretty straight forward. Hats off to Vulcan, and we departed that competition.
Little did I know that companies like Savelli (circa 1842) and has been building tight flask mold lines since the 1970’s, developing double squeeze Formi-press molding machine and electromechanical motion devices. BMD (circa 1855), gave us air impulse or impact mold machines. Sinto also competes in this market, and have an HWS line that drifted towards the Savelli technology over the years.
EMI had the opportunity to purchase the +GF+ DISA Impact mold line technology for North America, and the Sutter core machine product line. The IMPACT technology was most likely further developed, or was a spin off from the time where BMD was owned by them.
Sand Mixing had been dominated by Simpson not only in North America, but they have done an excellent job in the globalization of their product line and purchased their competitor B&P. Now owned by Norican (DISA), they also face against the European design of mixing versus mulling. This is not to mention all the challenges manufacturers face from the Xerox machine in the far East that has benefited from the easy flow of technology
B&P also had an engineer, Al Hunter, who left to start his own company— Hunter. He recognized the limitations of manual rotolifts like the Osborn 3161 and 3191, and went on to develop an automatic matchplate molding machine that quickly dominated the market. Hundreds of systems were sold with minimal competition. Hunter’s patents are still worth exploring on the USPTO website.
B&P attempted to go with a blown mold, flask less machine. This machine gave some competition to Hunter, but a little too late. In comes Sinto, and they really went to town. I remember seeing their side blow machines with metric sized plates, and even though it was built to Japanese standards, it didn’t catch on. Then, went Sinto brought out the FBO and rotated and blew the molds, it was game on.
As Hunter struggled against losing market share to Sinto, Brock came out with a Hunter clone and made it a hot-rodded Hunter that caught on with Canada. EMI had the opportunity to purchase Brock and fold it into our product line including mold handling system. This was more than Brock just offering a Hunter match plate machine replacement. EMI has since revised the entire Brock match plate machine series, and have developed some very nice features worth checking out.
As Sinto quickly gained market share, DISA took note. As what has become standard operating practices, DISA came out with their own rotateblow-squeeze flaskless machine, and offer quite the machine, similar to their vertical DISAMatics. Even as a competitor, hats off to DISA.
Maybe the market will soon see a blown match plate machine, similar to DISA and FBO, but with larger flask sizes (up to 36” x 36”), and a de-coupled core setting device that can push throughputs even to higher rates as are known now. EMI will keep you posted.
EMI had our own core room where we produced cores, mostly for the automative foundries. This included having over 30 core machines at Ford CCP, and working with Chrysler in Indianapolis. I remember when we were making the prototype cold box water jackets for a new car that would be launched as the Viper. These were so delicate and difficult to make, I doubt 30% of what we provided (after our scrap of 50%) made it into a mold. I assume that these would be printed today.
EMI was active in the large foundry market with cold box core machines. We found ourselves in a market where Laempe and Loramendi (Hottinger) dominated. We developed patents for the continuous clamp core machine that Laempe was easily able to move around. Loramendi probably had the most significant patent in cold box history with their Key Core patented process.
The next generational core machine change was the blowing one core package of several components (such as barrels, gear, end cores) together with an integral key core seemed like it had been tried and done. But Loramendi was quite clever, and they persevered with dominating this new core technology. Now, rather than casting engine blocks into a tight flask line, a core package was used with precision, including liners, and the molding systems were basically just carriers of these blocks.
I saw firsthand how American Steel Foundries (ASF) rebuilt themselves from almost nothing in the mid-1990s by pursuing a new core-making technology—large, consolidated cores. This strategy had never been attempted at such scale, and it marked a significant shift away from oil sand cores. I had heard stories about oil sand cores, but this was the first time I had actually seen them in use.
In fact, it became the premier method of manufacturing high volume aluminum blocks. The Cosworth process of pumping in aluminum into a core package, with a patented copper beryllium chill, slide gates and inversion moved from large fixed Adams roll overs and were replaced by a 700 kg robot.
But these blocks needed to be solution heat treated, quenched and aged. CDC and Procidine (GM entity) controlled the patented rights to some of these cooling methodologies. But then came along fluidized bed technologies that not only were equal, but quite superior in removing sand internally and reclaiming the sand.
All this aluminum technology in the foundry was moving along quite well, but in parallel great advances in the die cast industry and low pressure (to a lesser extent) started to chip away at these practices.
The demand from the automotive companies that wanted minimal (zero) sand left in their aluminum heads and blocks continued to push the chemical industry to develop better break down binders. These binders known as inorganic appeared to be the answer, but are quite tricky for the core machine manufactures.
EMI dealt with GM and Hormel in the development of running GM Bond in the foundries. Many technical challenges from a basic SO2 formula and driving off the water and curing in a warm/hot box were counterintuitive. ASK-k, HA and Devinne dedicated many years in perfecting the binders. Laempe had to perfect the sand mixing and delivery system which from our experience with GM Bond is a special challenge.
If you operated a foundry in a desert or arid climate, storing cores after production posed its own challenges. On the other hand, if you’ve ever been inside a Midwestern or Southern foundry with 90% humidity, you’d understand the opposite extreme— as you watched cores deform right before your eyes.
EMI saw the new standard core machine complexity of these automotive style core machines pricing them out of touch for any other foundry. These machines footprint and controls that the high capacity (70 cores an hour) requirement demanded made machines extremely complex and costly, and difficult to maintain for longevity in the automotive core rooms.
We worked on all types of core processing, feedback, including exhaust times, gas cure times, sand magazine designs. All this design was intuitive or trade secrets, which is simplified today with programs such as ASK-Chemicals arena flow.
EMI was driven to simplify the core machine design itself. The tooling was precise and intricate, so why not push the complexity of the core production to the tooling, and make the machines simple? This is where we developed the 3 in1 core machine, where the sand and amine gas could be introduced through one tube. No more gas manifolds and tamper plates, shuttling of the box or gas manifold, reduction or overlapping of the exhaust time.
EMI did just that with our patented design. Again, development time versus market timing and the conservative glacial decision making has shelved this unique design from the market place, even after several successful. Too bad that during the economic downturn of 2009 where automotive companies took billions in loans, that a provision to secure them wasn’t tied to a “Buy America” clause.
CFOM worked with EMI and we developed a fast cure process for the inorganics. This was particularly important for the process called Ablation. Without fast cure, the productivity of making molds from inorganics would not be capable to facilitate a commercially reasonable rate of productivity and throughput.
As the foundries pick and choose processes that meet their customer’s needs, they also can pursue No Bake solutions. This industry has seen great growth from the graduates of the Springfield Palmer Institute of No Bake Technology. I say that somewhat facetiously as the main manufactures of No Bake equipment had all worked under Jack Palmer at one time. And just like the three amigos from Osborn that started SPO, the others moved on to pursue their own visions.
I was fortunate enough to have had the pleasure and opportunity to work with Jack Palmer on several projects over the years. His drive, vision for change, all the crash and burned projects that resulted in success really showed me and exemplified the necessary drive to stay successful. If it weren’t for him and his wonderful marketing person Barb Castilano, I would not be writing this article for the 11th year of Simple Solutions That Work.
I have had the fortune to see some of the Titans that moved our industry over the years. Ray Witte started the collaboration of consolidation of foundries. Giants like Citation fell under one roof. Grede’s founder has an incredible track record, and his foundries are still traded like playing cards today. McWane has mastered the municipal casting industry in the US.
Waupaca showed the US market what can be done under one roof with an engineering team. MTI is another amazing story as they grew into a juggernaut and consumed the company they schooled at. GM is the only one of the big three that stayed true to their foundries. But there are so many efficiently run foundries that continue to grow and improve. Buck, Dixon, Fall River, Victaulic, WABTEC, and Boose Quality Castings.
I would conclude, at least in my 40 years in the foundry industry, that this North American market was developed by so many of us, that we are just adding bricks to the pyramid of knowledge. We are so busy, but when we look up and see the future with additive manufacturing, printing of cores & molds, addition of robots for as many tasks as we can imagine. The workforce being augmented with automation in ever department, and soon the implementation of AI (Grede has already embraced) when we can download all these centuries of knowledge and assist the next generations.
We may have finally seen the bottom of the curve in the U.S. depleting foundries that I have witnessed since the late 1980’s. Ross Perot warned us of a sucking sound of jobs leaving. George Bush teased us with naming a Manufacturing Czar to address off shoring. Do we finally have the right person with Don Trump and tariffs, or is he a few decades too late? One thing is for certain, the metals industry and foundries seem well poised to remain a back bone industrial component of U.S. manufacturing for many years to come.
My experience has been quite unique. Because of the industry I chose (or did it really choose me?), I have seen foundries in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Europe, India, China, and Australia. No matter what language, there is a common bond and thread. I may have been too young for Woodstock, too young where I had to draft on a table, too young where I had to type out FORTRAN cards, DOS programs, too old where I had to learn ACAD with a digitizer, understand DOS programs, learn Windows, and adapt to cell phones and laptops.
All I know is that they were melting and making castings before I was born, and I am sure it will continue long after I am gone. Hopefully EMI will be known for contributions that support the foundry pyramid of knowledge well after I am gone. I’m confident EMI’s family of companies will carry on—after all, I’m still updating drawings from the 1970s.”
For the record, I hated Disco (and the IMF machine too!).
