Singing from the same hymnal.

"Forgings win out over castings thanks to long-term performance"

This is the headline from a recent newsletter published and distributed by the Forging Industry Assn. The article states: "It's no surprise that forgings routinely outperform castings in a host of applications. High structural integrity, maximum strength, improved toughness, longer life and optimum reliability are just a few of the many reasons why."

The first and natural reaction of any dyed-in-the-wool metalcaster: "Bull!" That was mine, anyway.

The newsletter goes with several generic "advantages of forgings over castings," throws in a couple of photomicrographs, a properties comparison of forgings vs. castings and offers a case history with the headline: "Forgings take over from castings, cut costs, eliminate all rework and rejects for critical tank part."

After reading through the four pages of casting bashing, reactions can run from the initial response of "Bull!" to asking "Why aren't we doing something like this?" to "Who cares what they're putting out?" or maybe a combination of all three. Personally, my reaction is a little bit of the first two.

What the FIA is doing with its newsletter is what is known in better public relations circles as propaganda. That is using seemingly hard evidence while bashing the competition to sell a product, process or point of view. The idea is to keep it coming so long and make the message so convincing--whether it's right or wrong--that eventually the potential customer says, "We should look into this."

Nearly every point in the forging newsletter could be easily challenged and refuted by a knowledgeable metalcaster. And that's part of the idea behind propaganda--put your enemy or competitor on the defensive. Fact of the matter is, it's a technique that can be more than a little effective. But to be truly effective, it must be backed up by a program of educating that same potential customer.

This was a subject of discussion during a recent meeting of the AFS Marketing Division and I'm happy to report that we were all singing from the same hymnal: We should be doing more to promote metalcasting. So, one of the primary goals of the division will be to promote metal castings.

In fact, the process already began some years ago in several ways, using primarily the education and awareness approaches. For example, the Casting Source Directory was first published in May 1991 and distributed free of charge to 25,000 casting buyers and design engineers. The CSD is a joint effort of modern casting and Casting World magazines and contains capability listings for nearly 3000 North American foundries. The idea behind it was to keep engineers thinking "castings" and to make it easy for them to find casting sources. Advertising by foundries in the CSD has made it possible for us to continue making this service available to casting users.

Earlier this year, we distributed nearly 20,000 Designers' and Buyers' Guide to Selecting Casting Processes to this same audience. This, too, was produced jointly by modern casting and Casting World and backed by foundry advertising. And for several years, the Cast Metals Institute has offered casting design courses and seminars for design engineers.

Another significant effort at promoting the use of metal castings was initiated by the Chicago Chapter of AFS two years ago when the chapter organized the successful MetCast exhibition. This effort is continuing, but in a different venue in 1995. Rather than MetCast being a stand-alone exhibition, in March of 1995 it will become part of the National Design Engineering Show to be held in Chicago's McCormick Place. Foundries participating in MetCast '95 will be exposed to more than 25,000 engineers who traditionally attend the event. Any foundry interested in participating in this event should contact AFS Headquarters.

Even prior to the MetCast involvement in the Design Show, the Investment Casting and Lost Foam Divisions of AFS have exhibited at the exposition for several years.

So, in fact, efforts have been made to "push metalcasting," though, admittedly, they have been relatively passive efforts that have concentrated more on the educational and awareness aspects of the promotion process.

The AFS Marketing Division is now taking a hard look at ways to do more and do it more aggressively. We recognize that we have to build on and expand the programs already in place. In addition to communicating with current and potential casting customers, we must also develop programs aimed at "marketing metalcasting" to mechanical, materials and other engineering disciplines at the college and university levels. You'll be hearing more about these programs during the next several months.

One last word about the forging industry's program to bash castings: they're doing their job--trying to get metal parts business away from foundries. Our job is to expand the metalcasting market--let's get at it.