INDUSTRY FACES Former NHL Players Lead Palmer Foundry With Data Strategy
Brothers Dave and Bob Logan knew next to nothing about metalcasting when they purchased Palmer Foundry, Palmer, Mass., in 2000. But the former NHL players-turned- businessmen saw a prime opportunity to run their own company. With an engineering and product development background, Bob Logan took the helm of the aluminum sand casting facility while Dave Logan sought out further business opportunities for the partnership. Tirteen years later, the cast- ing business has expanded to include a new nobake casting facility, doubled in sales and is in the midst of an enterprise manufacturing intelligence (EMI) project encompassing data collection and integration for process and operation control. “Like anything else, we just dug in and figured it out,” Bob
Logan said about starting with the business. “I grew up in Que- bec knowing French and English. I played hockey in Italy and learned Italian. For me it was just learning another language.” Logan’s crash course in the language of metalcasting
included working in each department on the production floor. Tis helped him familiarize himself with the process, while also pinpointing areas he wanted to improve, such as ventilation at the shakeout area. A fire that destroyed half of the original metalcasting facility one year after the Logans purchased Palmer Foundry forced them to learn what makes a foundry run as they replaced $600,000 worth of patterns, as
PERSONALS Cast-Fab Technologies Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio, announced
that John L. Campbell and Tomas R. Caldwell both have achieved 50 years of service with the company.
Tinker Omega Manufacturing, Spring-
field, Ohio, has appointed David Cottrell as lead design engineer.
Scientific Dust Collectors, Alsip, Ill., has appointed Andrew Rutherford as sales manager.
General Kinematics, David Cottrell
Crystal Lake, Ill., named Amy Donahue marketing coordinator, where she will assist the sales and marketing team.
B&L Information Systems, Bridgman, Amy Donahue
Mich., has promoted Carol Gorbitz, senior software architect and business analyst, Brad Clark, Odyssey product manager, and Robert Korell, OpenEdge programmer.
Te Investment Casting Institute, Montvale, N.J., has named Joseph Fritz executive director.
OBITUARIES
Dennis Bunting, former vice president of engineering for Tyco International, Princeton, N.J., died May 24, 2013. He
was 72. A native of East Alton, Ill., Bunting graduated with an engineering degree from Milliken Univ., Decatur, Ill. He moved to Statesboro, Ga., in 1977 to become general manager of the Grinnell Corporation, a Tyco subsidiary. He retired in 1999 and returned to Statesboro from Malaysia, where he was a plant manager.
J. Hugh Rogers, vice president of Mid-
vale Industries, St. Louis, died June 23, 2013. He was 76. Rogers spent 54 years with Midvale. He was an AFS member for more than 30 years, serving as chairman of the St. Louis chapter in the 1980s. Rogers was instrumental in securing donations for the metallurgical engineering department at the Missouri Univ. of Science and Tech- nology, Rolla, Mo. He also was known for developing a unique bonding process with U.S. auto manu- facturers that enabled the mass production of fiberglass auto bodies in the 1960s.
J. Hugh Rogers Frank X. Gartland Jr., retired board chairman of Atlas
Foundry Co., Marion, Ind., died June 25, 2013. He was 95. Gartland was born in Marion and graduated from the Univ. of Notre Dame in 1939. He then began his 42-year career with Atlas Foundry, where he held positions such as shipping su- pervisor, treasurer and president. An AFS member since 1953, Gartland was in the Directors Class of 1979. He also served on the Foundry Education Foundation’s board of directors from 1970-1972.
September 2013 MODERN CASTING | 15
Yale graduate Bob Logan was drawn to the business opportunities former Palmer Foundry owners Roderick, Evelyn and Frank Jensen had established.
well as equipment. Luckily, the new nobake casting facility the brothers had funded was nearly 80% complete by then. Now, the business is enjoying the upward trend of industries
operating in a vacuum—such as the semiconductor and medical imaging sectors, preparing for tighter process control specifica- tions with their EMI and a demand for larger castings.
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