Implementation of Metal Casting Best Practices - EERE - U.S. ...

J. Aluminum Casting Facility-2
Plant Profile
Aluminum Casting Facility-2 is a 200,000 square foot family-owned foundry with a work force
of 270 employees; it uses a wide range of aluminum alloys to produce a variety of castings, such
as aircraft cylinder heads, boating parts, military equipment, and specialty car parts. The foundry
utilizes a variety of casting methods wherein 50% of their production uses green sand, 30%
permanent mold, and 20% die casting. Although the two major alloys used for production are
A535 and A206, the foundry pours 30 different alloys. Due to the diverse nature of the alloys
poured at the facility, it does not use a large central melter but instead employs 42 natural-gasfired
crucible furnaces to do its melting. The facility has a full range of heat treating furnaces,
quench tanks, and aging ovens. The castings produced at this facility range from ½ pound to
2,000 pounds. The annual aluminum casting shipments from this facility amounts to 4.5 million
pounds.
Aluminum Casting Facility-2 takes pride in its emphasis on quality. Foundry management is
always striving to improve quality and productivity within their manufacturing system. To
enhance its competitive position, the foundry focuses its efforts on prevention rather than
detection. Implementing and participating in the CMC and Metal Casting R&D efforts has been
an important part of this effort. The foundry also employs a variety of tools and techniques to
ensure and inspect quality. They model and perform simulations on almost all of their castings
using advanced CAD system simulation software. They also check the quality of their castings
by using tools that verify dimensional accuracy and by performing tensile testing, spectrographic
analysis, real-time and conventional X-ray analysis, and eddy current testing.
Onsite Assessment
The assessment team’s visit to Aluminum Casting Facility-2 started in the morning with a
meeting with the Vice-President of Engineering at the facility. Eppich Technologies and BCS
personnel received an overview of the research results the foundry had implemented to date. A
unique situation about this visit was that one of the Energy-Saving Melting and Revert Reduction
Technology (E-SMARRT) project primary investigators (a project funded by ITP) was
performing some trials on site. The assessment team provided facility management with an
overview of the tools and services of the ITP BestPractices subprogram. Management had no
awareness of the suite of BestPractices tools prior to the assessment team’s visit, although they
had heard at a society meeting of the IACs a week prior to the site visit. The facility is the right
size to qualify for an IAC assessment, and the assessment team provided them with contact
information for the IAC closest to the foundry.
1. Implemented R&D and Best Practices
Partnering in DOE Research
During the site visit at Aluminum Casting Facility-2, the assessment team observed first-hand the
research institution/industrial partnership at work. The foundry was working with researchers
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