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2009 Award Winners

The Institute of Cast Metals Engineers is pleased to congratulate its 2009 Award Winners:
(To see the previous winners please go to ICME Previous Awards Recipients)

Oliver Stubbs Medal - Professor Peter D Lee FICME, London Branch.
Peter joined Imperial College in 1994 after completing his D.Phil. in Materials Science from Oxford University. Prior to his doctoral studies on the solidification of aluminium, he was a Research Scientist at Alcan International’s Kingston R&D Laboratory, where he helped establish their Modelling of Shape Castings Programme, both developing analysis software and applying it to the design of many automotive castings. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and a member of the Institute of Cast Metals Engineers, ASM International and TMS. He holds a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science and M.A.Sc. in Materials from the University of Toronto, with his undergraduate and master's thesis focussing on the simulation of ferrous metallurgical processes.

Peter’s current research and teaching focuses on improving our understanding of microstructural development during the solidification of both ferrous and non-ferrous alloys through physical and computational simulation. He has supervised 27 PhD students and over 50 undergraduate projects on materials processing. His research has focused on developing novel in situ experimental techniques and open-source codes to better understand the formation of solidification structures and how they are coupled to the final properties of components.

E J Fox Medal - Michael Clifford Hon FICME, West Midlands, Birmingham & Coventry Branch
Mike joined Foseco for the first time in 1967 as a sales man for the Special Iron Foundry Division having first spent a period at BCIRA and then at John Williams Foundry in Cardiff. Mike's first job was based in the Yorkshire area.
In 1970 Mike and Olive then left Foseco to go to Australia to work for Borden Chemicals, the resin specialist. Here Mike was both a Regional sales manager and then the National sales manager.

In 1973 Mike then joined Foseco Australia as Manager of the Foundry Division.
Mike returned to the UK in 1976 to rejoin Foseco International as the International Manager for Resin Binders.

In 1979 Mike was promoted to the post of Director of Foseco Foundry International's Ferrous Metal Products Division, another role with a global responsibility, which included a wide export area, including Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, many parts of Africa, ie Countries and locations where we had no local manufacturing or operating Company, this enabled Mike to travel extensively to overseas operating companies.

In 1981 Mike transferred to the UK arm of Foseco Foundry, Foundry Services Ltd (As it was then called) in Tamworth as the Managing Director. Mike held this post until he left the company in 1996. Just before retirement he joined the WFO Executive later to become President.

Meritorious Services Medal - Douglas Hills FICME, London Branch
After leaving school at the age of fifteen, Doug started work at H J Maybrey, London and trained as a die draughtsman. In 1965 he worked for six months at the Cape Foundries in South Africa and on his return joined J Stone Ltd of Charlton as a die draughtsman. In 1968 he was given the job of Foundry Manager at Universal Castings in Bermondsey, South London. In 1972 he was appointed to the Board of Alite Foundry, Hackney, East London, as Works Director.

He decided to start his own foundry and formed Hills Diecasting Co Ltd. In September 1978 he opened the doors for business. The company was very successful, they moved several times and took over a number of small foundries on the way. In 1987 they took over the Reliance Foundry and their factory at Greenwich. They were approached in 1990 by Francis W Birkett and sold them the company, but he retained the dormant Reliance Foundry name. During the next two or three years, with his new business partner Roger Wood, they developed a range of building products and formed Caroflow Ltd. They formed Reliance Foundry in 1994 and both companies prospered. In 2002 they took over Maybrey Precision Castings Ltd, the company he started work with in 1959. The merged company Maybrey-Reliance now has three factories in the Dartford area trading within the Caroflow Group.

He would like to mention a number of inspirational foundry men he met on the way.
Mr Sid Dew and Mr Fred Fullbrook of H J Maybrey & Co
Mr Bob Balham of J Stone & Co, Charlton
Mr Bob Lilley of Universal Castings
Mr Alan Ware of Alite Foundry

And his first two employees: The larger than life Mr Melvin Cole and Mr Roger Johnson.

Meritorious Services Medal - Roger Davies Prof MICME, West Midlands, Birmingham & Coventry Branch
Roger was born in Cardiff and left school in 1965 to start a metallurgical apprenticeship with GKN in their local steel works. This later became a part of the British Steel Corporation.

In 1974, after 9 years in BSC, he left to join Foseco as a Salesman with their steel division and then a Product Manager responsible for the development and implementation of products for the continuous casting of steel.

In 1984, he was offered a chance by Mike Clifford, to switch from the steel to the Foundry Division of Foseco. This proved to be the start of his foundry career and over the last 25 years he has held a number of roles including Salesman for South West Britain, Account Manager for Primary and Secondary Non-Ferrous Businesses, Manager of their Irish agency, Product manager for Mould and Core products and Product manager for Ferrous Metal Treatment and Transfer. He retired from Foseco at the end of 2008 after 44 years in the metallurgical industry.

He first became fully involved with the Institute in 1990 when he joined the team on TS30, the group responsible for the study of all mould and core making processes. He later became Chairman of this group, and when their work was finished and published he moved on to become the Chairman of the Courses and Conference Committee until it was discontinued in the late 90s.

He has been a member of the West Midlands Branch since the mid 80s and has also served on Branch Council. He has given many papers at both local and national level and recently has travelled the UK with the Foseco “film show” giving performances at most local branches.

British Foundry Medal and Prize - Adrian Caden MICME, Youssef Beshay Student, Prof Xianfeng Fan MICME, Dr William Griffiths FICME, Dr Marc Hausard MICME and Prof David Parker MICME of the West Midlands, Birmingham & Coventry Branch
The Institute is pleased to announce that the British Foundry Medals have been awarded to the above for their joint paper entitled “The application of positron emission particle tracking (PEPT) to the study of inclusions in castings" in the October 2008 issue of Foundry Trade Journal.

Diploma - Dr John Spittle FICME, West Midlands, Birmingham & Coventry Branch
Dr John Spittle FICME, for his paper entitled “Grain refinement in shape casting of aluminium alloys” published in the November and December 2008 issues of the Foundry Trade Journal.

Long and Notable Service Award - Robert Armstrong Prof MICME, Roddy Crichton Prof MICME and Andrew Laing Prof MICME of the Scottish Branch and Thomas Riley MICME of the Lancashire Branch

Mr Roddy Crichton Prof MICME - Roddy Crichton’s career commenced in 1963 as Student Apprentice with Stewarts & Lloyds Tollcross Foundry. He graduated from Glasgow University with an Honours Degree in Metallurgy and commenced fulltime work as a technician on the Arc and Induction furnaces producing high quality steel castings, ingots and Pilger Rolls for tube making. In 1970 he joined Forth Alloys as Foundry Metallurgist where he first joined the Institute as an associate member, progressing in 1984 to a full member of the IBF. In 1974 he was appointed Methods Engineer at Robert Taylor & Co and progressed to Assistant Foundry Manager. Joining A Ballantine & Sons in 1977 as Foundry Manager he reported to Managing Director Ian Ballantine where he experienced 10 years of exciting challenging projects, one of which was manufacturing gates and railings for the Saudi Arabian Crown Princes. He then moved on in 1982 to experience management in iron/steel foundries at Dorrator iron, Shaw & McInnes and North British Stell foundries. In 1992 he retuned to Ballantine Boness Iron Company as Works Director and retired from there in October 2008. It gave him great pleasure to be President of the Scottish IBF in 1997-98 and the support he received from the Institute and his fellow members was second to none.

Mr Andrew Laing Prof MICME - Andrew Laing officially joined the family business in 1982 after many years gaining the practical skills of Brass moulding from his father and uncles during school holidays. He acquired his technical education in foundry technology at the Metcom Training Centre in Grangemouth and Falkirk College of Technology. In 1983 he joined the Institute of British Foundrymen. He has since occupied positions as workshop foreman, foundry manager and now managing director of Charles Laing and Sons Ltd, Edinburgh He was the Scottish Branch President in 2005.

M M Hallett Award - MAGMA Gießereitechnologie GmbH.
At a conference at Sheffield University in 1981 a young visionary, Professor Preben N. Hansen, presented to the world for the first time his work in the field of casting simulation and his program ‘Geomesh’ which could calculate, or predict, how a casting would solidify. Most foundries may have had a computer in the accounts department at that time, but most methods engineers were not aware of this fundamental work that had already been going on for over a decade. Collaboration between Prof Hansen and Prof Peter Sahm culminated in the founding of MAGMA in 1988. MAGMA released a commercial version of this work ‘MAGMASOFT®’ in 1989 and has continually developed simulation tools for the foundry industry for over 20 years. Version 1 of MAGMASOFT® allowed a foundry to predict how a casting would fill and solidify. From the start, MAGMASOFT® was based on the fundamental physics of fluid and heat flow. The use of foundry simulation provided new insights into the casting process.

Developments in the early 90’s resulted in the release of microstructural modelling techniques of the formation of cast iron microstructures. This allowed the effect of chemistry changes, inoculation and spheroidisation in ductile irons and their effect on phase expansion, contraction and mould dilation to be considered and more accurate porosity predictions to be made. The ability to prediction microstructures also resulted in the prediction of mechanical properties. Work with many Universities around the world, including Birmingham University in the UK, continued the improvement in existing capabilities. In 1998 the problems of casting distortion and cracking were tackled with the release of the MAGMAstress package, which allowed foundrymen to understand and avoid distortion and cracking in all cast materials. This was followed by the simulation of convection and segregation, heat treatment, structures and properties in steel castings. New methods for optimising castings and foundry processes have come from these innovative developments. These second generation simulation tools included process specific modules with specific process features such as shot curve calculation and squeeze pins in high pressure die casting (hpdc) and resulted in the software modules MAGMAhpdc, MAGMAlpdc and MAGMAdisa. Close alliances have been formed with supply companies to supply accurate consumable data to the MAGMASOFT® user. The third generation of tools were represented by the release of the autonomous optimisation module MAGMAfrontier in 2002 which can find the optimum feeder size and location, or gate position.

Today a methods engineer can quickly and reliably assess the way a casting will fill and solidify, predict structures and properties and provide the end user with a virtual casting before metal is poured. Casting process simulation tools have been successfully merged with metal casting experience of the foundry industry. The development of these technologies, and their worldwide acceptance has closely corresponded to the growth in technical understanding of the cast process, and the software products and MAGMA itself. Today MAGMA employs over 160 personnel and has sites in Aachen, Denmark, Chicago, San Paolo, Singapore and Seoul with satellite offices, representatives and agents in all foundry markets. There are around 1300 industrial licences of MAGMASOFT®. But the development goes on. 2009 will see the release of MAGMA 5, which will include more tools relevant to the foundryman such as core shooting and core breakdown in the mould to improve the accuracy of stress predictions as well as full heat treatment cycle modelling in all materials. Inclusion modelling in steel and aluminium are also on the development horizon. So there’s no slowing in the pace of development and MAGMA is committed to be around in another 20 years, supporting the foundry industry and the casting process to provide excellence in cast products.

REMET Modern Apprentice Award
Matthew is a Maintenance Technician Apprentice at Precision Disc Castings. He has completed his Advance Modern Apprenticeship, BTEC National and NVQ 2 & 3 certificates in Electrical Engineering. He is currently training as a shift electrical maintenace technician responsible for resolving breakdowns and completing Total Productive Maintenance schedules.