West Midlands Branch were fortunate enough to have participate on a site tour around the Foseco Tamworth Production site 2nd March 2020
Attendees:- Josh Ward, Adam Smart, Chris Mintern, Ed Fasham, Dave Parsons, Darren Pritchard, David Hall, Steve Fenton, Karl Hopkins, Steve Hale and Mark Holliday.
I would like to thank Paul Jeffs, Carl Woolley and Foseco for their time and the seamless organisation of the evening, for supporting the branch by allowing the visit and for supplying such an informative, safe and comfortable visit and site tour.
The presentation and manufacturing tour was very interesting with the technical experience and manufacturing knowledge coming across really well, and this was greatly appreciated by all the attendees. I would summarise some of my points of interest of the manufacturing process, as being the multiple weight checking, this is particularly important early on in this process based on value stream, because the main raw material is expensive!
There is also a dimensional feedback loop to the initial foam sizes based on the production batch-based amounts, due to the shrinkage variation during curing/firing. Finally on a production batch basis a metal impact test is performed to release that batch of production i.e. the product is batch tested and that includes how it performs in a simulated environment that includes molten metal impingement.
In the spirit of good standard capable quality control; – which would consider it to be particularly important for a foundry to understand the risks to their customers considering from their principal raw material suppliers. It is important for the foundries to therefore, clearly, understand exactly what it is they are getting technically for their money, when sourcing their filters as well as the correct application of a filter in a running system ‘Method’ and other foundry production controls including the handling / placing of the filters in the foundry moulding operations.
