With almost 80 attendees and full programme of talks from both UK and international experts, the latest ICME Branch Technical Seminar was a great success.

Newly badged under the ‘ICME Northern Branch’ following the regional restructure last year, the event, which was held at the AMRC in Rotherham, featured a number of technical presentations.

Following a welcome from Simon Alexander FICME, Wm Lee Castings, and with a focus on sustainability and best practice there were a number of talks of direct interest to sand foundries including from Sam Garner MICME (Omega Sinto Foundry Machinery Ltd, co-sponsors of the event) who spoke about “Automation and mould/casting tracking in no bake foundries”, Rudolf Wintgens, from Laempe Mössner Sinto GmbH (co-sponsors of the event) who shared the latest information and innovations on core shooting and Paul Siddy, James Durrans and Sons, who discussed the ‘Application of Refractory Coatings’.

The future of the castings and foundry industry featured in presentations by Joe Cox & Connor Knox from Sheffield Forgemasters who shared their insights on state of the art dimensional inspection and marking out using 3D scanning technology – “Getting it Right with Blue Light” – and Mike Leaney Prof MICME, CAT International, who spoke about developments in 3D printing of ceramic foundry consumables. Will Jeffs, Technical Development Director from CTI also provided an update on development and projects at Castings Technology International.

The future of manufacturing was also the focus of Matthew Cawood’s presentation entitled ‘Industry 4 & The Foundry’ during which he gave an update on work underway at AMRC Castings using AI and Digital Twins to predict and optimise production of safety critical parts.

Richard Heath Prof MICME, the Health Safety & Environment Officer for the Cast Metals Federation, gave an entertaining talk (given the subject area) entitled, ‘I’m fighting the law and the law won’ which provided an important update on the current HSE campaign focussing on controlling dusts and fumes in foundries.  The HSE is finding that foundries are not meeting their legal requirements which is resulting in improvement notices being issued, he explained, and the industry can expect a further programme of inspection visits over the coming months.   He also spoke about the work that the Safety and Heath Initiative (SHIFT) is doing to help share good practice and improve health and employee well-being in foundries – important at a time when the industry is facing recruitment and retention challenges.

There was also a discussion around the current programme of training and skills development that the Institute of Cast Metals Engineers is offering, supported by many of the Members, including bespoke technical courses, leadership & management programmes and professional development opportunities.  Robert Bell, ICME National President EngTech FICME spoke about the importance of this work to the Institute, its Members and the wider industry, as well as the future growth opportunities as ICME seeks to expand the training ‘offer’ into new technical areas and to end users of castings, as well as work to change the perception of the industry and encourage more young people to consider a career in casting.

In closing, Simon explained that the seminar was the culmination of a lot of work by a small number of people, and he thanked everyone who had been involved in making the event such a success, including the attendees, the sponsors (Omega Sinto Foundry Machinery Ltd and Laempe Mössner Sinto GmbH) and all of the speakers – the branch will plan another for next year so he invited everyone to meet again in 2024!