CPT International 03/2016

EDITORIAL K
Made in Germany –
a success story!
Germany has a worldwide reputation for its great cars, its beer brewing artistry
and its successful world-class football. German engineers and technology
have also been considered pioneering since the industrial revolution in the
19 th century – with the invention of the car, jet propulsion engines and nuclear
fission, for example. While these inventions marked far-reaching technological
upheavals, German engineers have also made their mark on developments
in many other sectors. Such as in foundry technology where, for
example, Dr. Adey first produced cast iron with spheroidal graphite in 1939,
revolutionizing the foundry world. The German foundry industry is now considered
the most productive worldwide, which is not least due to its state-ofthe-art
plant technology and its innovative capability in areas such as sand
preparation, core production, smelting operations and, last but not least, quality
assurance and simulation technology.
CASTING, PLANT & TECHNOLOGY takes these technologies out into the
world: in this issue we focus on, among other things, core production technologies.
We examine the production of cores at the Halberg Guss foundry from
two different perspectives: first we consider the maintenance-free Fibromat
rotary table for transporting parts (from P. 12) then we take a look at the fully
automatic assembly of core packages by 25 Kuka robots (from P. 16)!
Articles on quality assurance form another large section in this issue – from a
sophisticated coating preparation plant (P. 20), through turbo-grinders for wind
turbine castings (P. 24), to cryogenic deburring of non-ferrous parts (P. 28).
German foundries produce top quality in all sizes, as can be seen from the
Siempelkamp foundry in Krefeld: they recently produced the world’s longest
casting made of cast iron with spheroidal graphite for a Czech company (from
P. 30). Another article is dedicated to the production of castings for the energy
transition (from P. 34).
This issue is rounded out by a user report on the TimeLine-Guss ERP/PPS system
in Dutch foundry BUVO Castings in Helmond (from P. 38), and the works
report “Shaping the future with die-casting technology” about KSM Castings
in Hildesheim – a successful example of Chinese-German industrial cooperation
(from P. 40).
Have a good read!
Robert Piterek
e-mail: robert.piterek@bdguss.de
Casting Plant & Technology 3/2016 3