Inside ICI
Industry Pioneer Robert Horton Remembered IN MEMORIAM
Robert A. Horton Sr. 1929 - 2018
The following is part of an interivew conducted in an effort to retain the history of investment casting industry.
T Investment casting innovator Bob
Horton is among an elite few who have been in the industry since 1949. The holder of 39 patents, he has pioneered research and development in shell, wax and metals/alloys. Yet he maintains “dumb luck” put him in the right place at the right time to make his mark on investment casting. “I consider myself very, very lucky,
because it was dumb luck, you know?” Horton said. “I went to college at night at Cooper Union in NYC and they required engineering students at night to have a job in technology during the day,” he explained. The first year, he worked in a lab
that supported wholesale bakeries, but knowing this was not what he wanted as his life’s work, he quit toward the end of the year to study for exams. He subsequently answered a help wanted ad for a lab assistant in Manhattan, thinking it would be convenient to school. The employer turned out to be Austenal (later Howmet). “So this was my first bit of dumb
luck because I came to really love investment casting and it was an ideal opportunity for me too, because I had a lot of years of schooling I still had to do, and investment casting was new enough that you could make contributions. You didn’t have to have a PhD and you didn’t have to have 20 years of experience. It
6 ❘ February 2018 ®
he Investment Casting Institute is deeply saddened to announce the passing of Robert Horton.
Robert Horton was recently awarded with the Investment Casting Institute’s Hall of Honor Award by Executive Director Joseph E. Fritz and members of the Institute’s Board of Directors.
was perfect for me. As I learned things in school, I could see how they applied, and vice versa.” It was while he was in school and
working at Austenal that Horton began his lifelong journey into investment casting research. As part of an engineering literature
course, he compiled a bibliography of literature on investment casting. “I turned it in and I got an A on that, but more importantly, I turned it into my boss and he was astonished. He couldn’t get over that I had done this... and I could see that his attitude towards me totally changed; and I got more and more assignments that challenged me,” Horton continued. “So that was a piece of luck, but then a better thing came along. Austenal was very big in research and development.” At Austenal, Horton worked directly with a prominent ceramicist
on two
major projects: a new, better investment for metal, and ceramic shells. “I was lucky to be in such a position,”
he said of being on the ground floor of the ceramic shell process. “Austenal, when it heard about and read about the frozen mercury (patterns), they said ‘why can’t we do it in wax?’ And that’s how it started.” Horton indicated he thought little of
where all his education and experience were leading. “To some extent, I didn’t care because I had to have a job, and I had to be in a technological situation, and my big thing was going to school,” he said. “For the first year or two I did just routine tests... and then they started teaching me about what investments were, and I thought ‘this is wonderful’ because I very quickly got to the point where if they wanted to change an investment, they came to me to do it. And then they put me in charge of a small refractory department. It was just wonderful. I had to stay. I couldn’t go any place else. I knew I’d do this.” Not satisfied to be a ceramic
specialist, Horton reasoned that since metals were the product, and the
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