State Brass has reduced the lead time on the castings by several hours due to lower cooling times and reduced finishing requirements.
Take Two For casting buyer JBT, a company-
wide policy of re-bidding all of its components every year allowed it to discover the centrifugal casting process. The OEM heard that State Brass had installed its larger vertical centrifugal machine in 1995, and after it sent out its requests for quote, the metalcaster’s new bid came back lower and with shorter lead times than it had previ- ously offered. Thanks to the centrifugal casting
process and its ability to limit poros- ity, shrinkage and inclusion defects, State Brass now produces more quality bearing castings for JBT with less scrap,
32
which in itself saves both companies time and money. “They were able to produce the
part [in centrifugal casting] for a lower cost, and we were happy to go back to them,” Manning said. “It’s now of very good quality, and it’s always on time.” The new process also has allowed
State Brass to yield more parts per hour. Where in the green sand process the metalcaster produced the two parts in roughly three hours, State Brass can now pour both pieces in one mold in about half an hour, quickly blast it and then send it directly to the machine shop, where it is cut into two parts. According to Archer, the centrifugal
process has saved two hours per casting (which includes a molding time reduction in addition to the lower cooling time), allowing State Brass to go from three to four green sand castings to 16 centrifugal castings in the same eight-hour shift. Im- proved casting yield also has saved 50-75 lbs. of metal per part, which Archer said was critical for a casting that starts out as a 385-lb. piece and is machined into the 73- and 57-lb. components. State Brass also has trimmed the
amount of value-added services it per- forms on the part, further highlighting the mold-to-customer strategy it has taken on the job. “We were casting them, machining
MODERN CASTING / October 2010
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