December 2012 Issue Foundry Magazine

Foundry overall is a slow-growth market.  Generally, the industry is very competitive, leading to low profitability and financial instability for many foundries.  Nonetheless, long-term sustained and profitable growth is achieved by some management teams even in this challenging environment.  How do they do it?...More

Metalcast S.A. de C.V. is an investment caster with 200 employees in Puebla, Mexico, that is casting increasingly complex parts in more challenging alloys. Stefan Plotz, an engineering consultant, worked with Metalcast engineers to reduce the proportion of rejects in the production of a valve body. "Computer simulation of the casting process helps understand the root cause of defects and evaluate the performance of modified designs without having to build tooling," Plotz emphasized....More