Thanks for the add. A little about me, 64-year-old, soon to be retired Foundryman. Started my career in a small permanent mold and green sand aluminum shop in Iowa. Worked my way from grinding parts on a 4-in belt to giving breaks on permanent mold anything is better than grinding all day long LOL), working the core room on old Dependable 100, 200 and 400 core machines. Ran squeezers, roto-lift, cope/drag lines. Cut our sand on the floor in winrows using an old Moulders Friend sand cutter, then pushed it into a pile and put into our sand system with an old bobcat. All rather Stone Age now. In fact that's how I found this forum- trying to search for pictures of the Moulders Friend... to show a young engineer who just joined my company the way things used to be. I still haven't found those pictures LOL. Almost 40 years in The Foundry industry, have worked in Steel, iron, ductile and brass/bronze....and now back in aluminum permanent mold here in Wisconsin. I've done everything up to plant manager, quality manager and quality engineer, supervisor.. you name it. I cannot say that I have not enjoyed it. I can say that I have never done exactly the same thing for two days in a row for the last 40 years and I would never have picked anything different. For me molten metal and molding was just like a moth being drawn to a fire. Granted, much of that time was kind of like herding cats... if you get 80% of the cats to do 80% of what you want, 80% of the time it's a pretty good day. That's Foundry. So now that I'm facing retirement soon, I might just have to set up my own little hobby foundry.... casting bullets and sinkers for my other hobbies. Who knows, maybe I'll even set up a forge and start trying to make some Damascus steel knives or something. Anyway thanks for letting me join the group look forward to learning more about you all.
Welcome to the forum, We'll be able to get a lot of practical help from your experiences. I have a very small backyard foundry to make the castings I need for the equipment I make, I got sucked in by helping a small non ferrous foundry that used the Pepset no bake resin sand to make their products. It's addictive!
Welcome IP, I grew up around pro pattern makers and foundrymen. They would throw me the dog jobs in pattern making they wouldn't take themselves and give me access to their foundry to do my own work. Sure was nice having access to pro-managed molten metal. In my professional life I designed and spec'd castings from all casting disciplines. Between the two I thought I knew a lot about the casting until 9 yrs ago when I started practicing casting processes from cradle to grave.....there's a difference between academics and practitioners... Best, Kelly
Welcome to the forum IP. My last foundry project was a simple permanent mold in aluminum via lost foam to make a set of 3 pounds (1.3kg) each lead weights. I am trying to adjust to life without ready access to meltable aluminum scraps and a machine shop that I enjoyed at my last employer.
Greetings, currently in Iowa new John Deere and other metal manufacturing like Viking Pump. Walk by the UNI Metal Casting from time to time, and peer in through the windows like a five year old outside the candy store. Funny enough my day job is pressing buttons, but I like to mess with metal and plasma and lasers and anything else dangerous. So welcome.
We have a new Foundry Engineer at work who is a recent graduate of UNI Metal Casting technologies program. She describes her first experience with molten metal as "a moth to a flame moment". I'm sure most foundry aficionados understand that moment 100%. I know I do.
