After casting, the water passage was machined and leak checked in-house. “Honda brings us onboard very
early in the process,” said Oliver Johnson, president, TEI. “We work together and consult from nearly the beginning, and they get a higher quality casting more quickly because of it. It’s a win-win for everyone, even though it’s a bit different than the standard process of quoting the part. You’re just picking a partner earlier in the process, and the water passage is a great example of our relationship.”
Locating a Source
At its 85,000-sq.-ft. facility outside Detroit, TEI’s prototyping department runs alongside an opera- tion that produces a wide range of tooling for the metalcasting industry. TEI also offers prototype design- ing, engineering and casting support through its “Casting & Development
Center,” which handled much of the water passage project. “We manufacture our own tool-
ing, we cast onsite and we machine in-house,” said Ted Kahaian, process manager, TEI. “Customers are ship- ping in trial parts or placing orders electronically, and we deliver finished parts that are ready to be bolted onto engines for testing.” When Honda began looking for
a prototyping source, the corpora- tion settled on TEI for two major reasons. A dedication to confiden- tiality made TEI a perfect partner considering its ability to handle the majority of responsibilities, includ- ing design and engineering, tool manufacturing, casting, metrology, machining, assembly and testing, at a single site. Additionally, TEI offers a low pressure nobake sand casting
process, something that Japanese automotive manufacturers use for major engine parts such as cylinder heads, transmission housings and oil pans. Even if the eventual com- ponent will be produced via high pressure diecasting, the low pressure sand casting process can produce an appropriately high quality prototype. “We regularly handle parts that
are ultimately high pressure die cast- ings, but tooling costs and lead times are major issues,” Johnson said. “For something like a transmission, for example, the tool could cost a mil- lion dollars and take six months. We can make a first casting in six weeks that will be representative in wall thickness and geometry.”
Planning for Action While lead times for prototypes
will vary from project to project, March 2015 MODERN CASTING | 39
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