'Expanding the Possibilities' at Rochester Metal Products.

By adding ductile iron and high-production vertically parted molding to its capabilities, this 100-year-old metalcaster has solidified its claim as the quintessential jobbing foundry.

The heart of the foundry industry is its job shops. In an era when some manufacturing firms seem to be focused on developing and marketing their "niche" capability or product to lure in customers, many foundries have embraced their jobbing status as a way to differentiate themselves.

For Rochester Metal Products Corp. (RMP), a 450-employee ductile and gray iron foundry in Rochester, Indiana, its niche in cast component supply can be defined only as jobbing. In fact, RMP is continuing to expand its customer base and the markets it serves, making sure its fortunes do not rest on the whims of any one market segment.

"Since the foundry entered the jobbing market in the '50s, the goal has been to diversify our customer and product base," said Don Christenson, senior vice president and general manager. "This keeps our casting shipments on level ground without having to face the highs and lows of any one industry."

As part of this quest for a broad product base, RMP entered into new territory in 1995 by adding both ductile iron and vertically parted, flaskless green sand molding to its existing horizontally parted molding facilities. As part of a $30-million expansion that included the addition of two molding lines, RMP has more than doubled its sales, increased employment to 450, and increased production capacity to 80,000 tons/yr. This expansion set the stage for an even further diversification.

In Search of Diversity

RMP traces its origins to the early 1880s as the captive foundry department of the Haynes-Spencer Co., Richmond, Indiana, which was producing school furniture. In 1895, the Spencer family (whose descendents still own RMP today) expanded its business to the production of hand-push lawnmowers and lawnmower castings and formed the American Lawn Mower Co. In 1901, the company moved to Muncie, Indiana, where it manufactured lawn mower and school desk furniture until the 1930s. In 1937, the American Lawn Mower Co. moved its foundry to Rochester, Indiana, expanded it and changed the name to Rochester Metal Products. In 1954, the foundry produced its first non-captive components--Water pump castings--signaling its entrance into the jobbing foundry industry.

From that point, the foundry continued to upgrade its casting equipment from jolt-squeeze molding in the '40s to the addition of a high-production molding system in the '50s to the addition of automatic matchplate molding in the '60s. By 1995, the foundry consisted of four automatic matchplate molding lines (flask sizes of 20 x 24-in, and 14 x 19-in.) with turntables and cooling systems. It was producing gray iron castings from 1-50 lb at a rate of more than 70 tons/days. Although the foundry had seen continued growth since the late '80s, its current building's structure wouldn't allow for more incremented expansion of current capacity (beyond equipment upgrades) without a massive reconfiguring of the plant's layout.

"We evaluated an increase in gray iron capacity along our existing production lines, but it didn't present the growth opportunities we wanted," said Christenson. "However, we saw the potential growth in high-production molding and ductile iron casting. If we were to continue our diversification and make inroads into new market segments, we had to think along new production lines and diversify along these roads."

For RMP (which achieved QS9000 in 1997), the diversification into ductile iron wasn't going to be the simple addition of a couple molding lines and a new furnace. RMP had its sights set on the new opportunities available from vertically parted, flaskless green sand molding. After visiting other foundries that successfully had such molding lines, the decision was made to tackle both ductile iron and high-production molding in one shot. With the land available for expansion adjacent to its existing foundry, the foundation was laid.

Expansion to High-Production

RMP's initial decision was to build a new plant for both gray and ductile iron castings. The foundry believed that its expertise in gray iron would help secure the initial orders for the new line, while slowly ramping up ductile iron production at the same time. Initially, the new plant would ramp-up with a single Disamatic 2013B Mark V molding line with a 239-ft. cooling line (the second longest in the U.S. when installed) and share gray iron and ductile iron casting production. The initial expansion was designed with the intention of adding a second line once the initial line was ramped up (This second line addition occurred in 1998.)

To simplify its expansion, RMP upgraded its existing melt shop to accommodate the new molding lines. The foundry's "new" melt shop in the existing plant includes two 11 ton/hr coreless induction furnaces for melting the base ductile iron. This was added to three 35-ton channel induction furnaces (two 1500 kW and one 3000 kW) for melting and holding the base gray iron. The furnaces are tapped into 8000-lb open-top ladles on a monorail system to transfer the iron to the various molding lines.

The problem for RMP, however, was the logistics of handling both gray and ductile iron on the same line. Since most of the orders for the new shop were ductile iron (which was great from a profitability standpoint), it became increasingly difficult to schedule gray iron lobs without hurting ductile iron production. As a result, after 1.5 yr of casting both gray and ductile on the same molding line, gray iron casting in the new foundry (which accounted for only 10% of the new line's production) was ceased. This paved the way for the installation and ramp-up of the second mold line in 1998.

"I won't say the ramp-up of ductile iron to full capacity was easy because we made mistakes," said Mike Slaydon, vertically parted molding plant superintendent. "But we were able to learn from those errors, rectify them and maintain steady production."

Ductile Iron Production

For ductile iron casting production with the two molding lines, melting is performed in the older foundry and then transferred to a 25-ton holding furnace. The holder taps into 4500-lb. tundish ladles in which the iron is treated with 5% magnesium ferrosilicon (MgFeSi), cover steel and any required alloys. From there, it is transferred to one of two 10-ton Duca Pressure Pour vertical channel induction furnaces for pouring.

Stopper rod pouring is performed by the furnaces in conjunction with Selcom LaserPour systems at a temperature of 2525-2575F (1385-1412C). Instream inoculation is performed, which results in an average final chemistry of 3.6-3.8% carbon, 2.45-2.65% silicon, 0.03-0.037% Mg and 0.001-0.003% sulfur for ductile iron castings.

This pouring system consists of a real-time laser sensor that monitors the iron level in the pour cup. The dedicated computer for this laser system receives updated cup level information to determine if iron flow into the mold should increase or decrease. Also, the system actuator determines whether to open or close the stopper rod and where the next pouring cup on the next mold will be located so the pouring vessel can be moved to the location before the pour begins. In conjunction with the pressure pour system, this laser pouring system allows the foundry to maintain total control of the melt and change patterns without having to reset every control in its system.

"What is critical about our high-production pouring is the ability to minimize over-pours," said Slaydon. "The stopper-rod pourer works in sync with the molding line to anticipate the mold's arrival under the pouring spout. The result is that the metal reaches the mold at the same time the pour cup is in position to receive the metal. We are able to maximize our mold production and our casting yield."

In the new foundry, about 30% of its vertically parted castings are cored (all coldbox). With more than 200 active patterns, RMP runs up to 375 molds/hr/ line and 10,500 molds/day on the vertically parted lines. Sand is fed at a rate of 75 tons/hr via two mullers employing compactability controllers. Uptime for the molding lines fluctuates between 82 and 88%. The result is more than 160 tons of good castings/day.

Once poured, a casting cools in the mold for approximately 45 min. RMP uses rotary media drums for casting shakeout and then feeds the castings automatically to shotblast. One element of quality control RMP installed in the new foundry was video surveillance of the castings as they left shakeout. This video allows plant workers to watch for defective production runs. If a problem occurs, the path of the casting is changed to separate the defect into a holding bin. As a result, the foundry eliminates some of the bottleneck in cleaning and finishing by removing easily identifiable defective castings before shotblast.

"The most difficult thing about high-production vertically parted green sand lines is that one mistake is never just one mistake," said Slaydon. "Due to the speed of our new machines, by the time we realize there has been a mistake, the mistake has compounded itself and one problem becomes eight."

The new plant produces castings weighing from 0.75-35-lb. Although 55% of this work is automotive, it also produces for the railroad (10%) and diesel engine (8.6%) markets, as well as a large amount of miscellaneous jobbing work (24.7%).

"We are making a conscious effort not to become strictly an automotive supplier," said Frankie Swango, sales manager. "This is the propensity with high-production, vertically parted molding, but we know in the long run it will be better not to become dependent on this market."

This is furthered by Christenson: "Overseas foundries will continue to eat away at the marketshare on the high-production commodity-type castings. The complexity we can cast in the vertically parted foundry allows us to hit other markets."

RMP's customers appear to agree with the foundry's philosophy of diversification. Despite the addition of the second vertically parted molding line in 1998, capacity for the new plant reached 85-90% by the end of last year.

Although there aren't any current plans for future expansion of its existing facilities, RMP never will say never. The key factor is whether the expansion would enhance RMP's "niche"--diversity.

Rochester Metal Products Corp.

Rochester, Indiana

Casting Data: Gray (class 25, 30 and 35) and ductile (65/45/12, 80/55/06, 100/70/03 and 60/40/18 heat treated) iron.

1999 Capacity: 80,000 tons/yr.

Markets Served: Automotive; diesel engine; railroad; pumps; marine engine; power transmission; bearings; valves/regulators; compressors.

Processes: Horizontally (flask sizes of 20 x 24-in. and 14 x 19-in.) and vertically parted (mold size of 25.6 x 21.1 x 18.9-in.) green sand molding; coldbox and shell coremaking; coreless and electric channel induction melting.

Size: 200,000 sq ft.

Employees: 450.

Founded: 1880s.

Staff Officials: R.E. Kersey, CEO; Don Christenson, senior vice president/general manager; Mike Slaydon, superintendent-Disa operations; Tracy Skarbek, superintendent-Hunter operations; Richard Bean, director of sales & marketing; Frankie Swango, sales manager; Janet Woodward, production control supervisor-Hunter operation; Candi Moudy production control supervisor-Disa operation; Larry White, director of quality & technical services; Craig Sederholm, plant metallurgist.