Where to turn for technical training.

CMI, vendors and universities are among the industry's best sources for providing workers with metalcasting knowledge.

In the next few years, many of your quality people will

be retiring. You probably don't even want to think about replacing 30 years of knowledge of a retiring melt deck supervisor, but that's exactly why training is so important. As new people enter the industry, and existing workers fill new positions, foundries should expect a higher demand for quality training. Unfortunately, the traditional training avenues like vocational schools and junior colleges, have all but dried up.

Technical training is more important today than it has ever been. But where should your company start? Among the most relied upon industry training resources for metalcasting are the Cast Metals Institute, suppliers and universities. Each of these organizations have their own merits and can help foundries in different ways. This article will explain how your foundry can best use these resources to secure a workforce well-trained in all aspects of high-quality casting production.

Cast Metals Institute

CMI is as good a reflection as there is that foundries train their own. Formed in 1957, "by foundrymen for foundrymen to strengthen people, processes and product knowledge through broad educational programs," CMI is the educational arm of the American Foundrymen's Society and is located at its headquarters in Des Plaines, Illinois.

CMI is structured to respond to advances in foundry technologies and operations that have become more sophisticated in recent years. Originally known as the AFS Training & Research Institute, its purpose was to disseminate technical and managerial information to foundries, their suppliers and customers. That basic mission has not changed.

CMI has educated more than 66,000 people since its inception, averaging about 2500 graduates a year. Offering more than 60 different courses, books and videotapes, pius in-plant training, CMI meets most of the technical training needs of the foundry industry. Its facility is comprised of a small foundry lab, sand lab, metallurgical testing lab, lecture hall, cafeteria and several classrooms - an educational infrastructure rarely found in other industries.

"We try to provide the best training we can, as affordably as we can," said CMI Vice President of Education Ian Kay. "If you look at other industries, many have training facilities, but few have the laboratory space we have. Our labs are a great reinforcement tool and allow people to learn from their mistakes."

Within the foundry lab are a 300-lb and a 500-lb induction furnace, a 30-lb lift-swing nonferrous furnace, a jolt squeeze molding machine, a shell core machine and a continuous mixer, as well as a tumble and table shotblast machine. The foundry lab also has a 250-lb aluminum resistance furnace, a No. 30 gas-fired crucible furnace and a tilt-pour permanent mold machine.

The sand lab features all the common sand testing and nondestructive testing equipment including a dilatometer, a wet tensile machine, a hot distortion tester and a gas evolution tester. The facility also has a complete investment casting lab, a metallography lab, a scanning electron microscope, two spectrometers, an X-ray machine and hardness testers.

Another advantage of attending CMI is the quality of its teaching staff. Each year, Kay and Director of Education Wayne Rasmussen are joined by 50 of the industry's top presenters. Among these are Gene Muratore, senior foundry metallurgist at Rio Tinto Iran & Titanium America, Rosemont, Illinois, a supplier of raw materials for producing ductile iron. For several years, he has taught classes on basic metalcasting and ductile iron both through CMI and company-sponsored seminars.

"An advantage of taking classes at CMI is that it's like one-stop shopping," said Muratore of the comprehensive course catalog. "The advantage is that it offers the entire spectrum of training topics."

Most CMI courses include both lectures and time in the lab. For example, one of the more popular courses is Metallurgy of Gray and Ductile Iron. In this four-day class, students first review basic metallurgy, cast iron and solidification. By the end of the first day the students have covered microstructural features of graphite and ferrite-pearlite, and have spent time in the lab covering phase diagrams for iron-iron carbide systems. The second day, the lecture focuses on iron composition control, molten metal handling and treatment and ductile iron treatment. On this day, the students also return to the lab for a study of shakeout times for gray and ductile iron castings. On the third day, the lecture deals with controlling metal quality, the effects of superheating, section sensitivity and austempered ductile iron. The final day of class includes a lecture on metallographic sample preparation. Hardness tests are run in the lab and time is spent reviewing the previous laboratory demonstrations.

Students also have the option to become certified in eight different areas. These technological areas include general foundry, green sand, chemically bonded sand, ferrous metals, nonferrous metals, foundry maintenance, foundry engineering and foundry management. Five to seven courses are taken for each certification.

In general, CMI courses start at $400. Classes range from two-day lecture courses to four-day labs. The cost includes textbook materials, meals and transportation from the hotel near O'Hare International Airport. CMI also offers discounts for foundries that register more than one person for a course.

Because travel and employees' time away from their jobs can be a hindrance to sending employees to CMI, that is one reason why the Institute also offers in-plant training. By choosing this option, a large group can receive some of the same hands-on training that takes place in CMI labs without the travel costs. The in-plant training is more cost effective than attending classes at the Institute if your foundry wants to train several people at the same time. The in-plant seminars are held at a cost of $175 an hour plus $50 a student for corporate members.

As with any training, state grants can bring down the cost. For instance, CMI recently conducted implant training at Wagner Castings, Decatur, Illinois, for 39 workers at a cost of only $43 per student. Most classes offered can be adapted to in-plants, Kay said.

Benton Foundry in Benton, Pennsylvania, a gray and ductile iron foundry, has held three CMI in-plants in the last few years. Although courses offered in-plant are purely lecture, CMI will customize the curricula to the foundry's needs, Benton President Fritz Hall said. The CMI instructors also are up-to-date with metalcasting procedures and are not associated with any particular product, he added.

"From a cost standpoint it's great," Hall said. "You save money on airfare and hotel reservations, and the employee doesn't lose any time from work."

Another newer resource at CMI is its catalog of videotaped lectures. Currently, about 12 tapes are offered, and about a dozen more will be produced in the coming year. Each tape corresponds to one of the regularly held courses. Kay said more tapes will be made later this year as the organization continues to improve the range of opportunities it offers. "There are two things that make the tapes useful - some people have a hard time getting to the facility and the price is right," Kay said.

Foundrymen can also turn to other trade associations for both in-plant training, seminars and conferences. Other associations offering training programs include the Ductile Iron Society, North American Die Casting Assn., Investment Casting Institute, Non-Ferrous Founders' Society, and Steel Founders' Society of America.

Suppliers

Another option for training is that offered by those companies from which your foundry purchases raw materials and equipment. Foundries often turn to their suppliers when they are in need of technical assistance in troubleshooting a specific problem, but many of these same companies can provide a variety of quality training programs. The advantage to the supplier-provided training programs is that nearly all of them take place in the foundries themselves. Rio Tinto I & T America offers four courses on ductile iron metallurgy as well as gating and risering courses. All the courses are held in-plant.

The major difference between this type of training and what is offered elsewhere is that it is product related. In most cases, training, like technical assistance, is included in the cost of the product. Therefore, training can be obtained by choosing the right vendor for a product. This may result in paying more for the product or equipment, but you gain the long-term benefit of trianing for your company.

One example is the operating and maintenance courses offered by U.S. Filter/Wheelabrator for its blastcleaning equipment. According to Gene A. Tarabek and Gary Weil, national training managers for U.S. Filter, the one-day O&M schools have proven to be very popular with users of their machinery. The same goes for Inductotherm. The company focuses on safe and efficient operation and maintenance of its melt shop equipment, and provides training in-plant or at its Rancocas, New Jersey, facility. During the past year, it has conducted training at 29 companies. The furnace maker also has created a free foundry safety package that includes a 28-page booklet, individual safety bulletins, a four-part video tape and a complete slide presentation.

Ashland Chemical's Foundry Products Div., Dublin, Ohio, which produces binders, refractory coatings and chemical specialties for the foundry industry, offers training on coldbox coremaking and nobake molding and coremaking. The company offers casting defect analysis, tooling and safety courses. As is most often the case, the seminars are offered for customers only, and are held either in-plant or at the company's training facility. Delta Resins and Refractories offers large scale seminars covering the same topics, as well as 10 smaller training classes.

Many other suppliers offer training to foundries. Benton Foundry has used several vendor-sponsored in-plant training programs during the past year. These include Allied Mineral Products for furnace refractory installation, Inductotherm for furnace operation, Norton Manufacturing for grinding safety, American Colloid Co. for sand training and Miller & Co. for metallurgy training.

"We use both CMI and our suppliers for our training purposes," Hall said. "It all depends on what we're going after. Suppliers are good for specific training, while CMI is good for basic metalcasting courses."

These suppliers are only part of a much larger field of companies offering training to foundries. Most of your current suppliers are offering training in one form or another.

Colleges and Universities

Another training resource is no further away than the nearest metalcasting college or university. Throughout the last several years, universities with metalcasting programs such those listed on p. 55 have helped train new workers at several foundries.

For example, Robert Voigt of the Pennsylvania State Univ. foundry program helped a nearby ductile and gray iron foundry, Belleville Casting Corp., train several new workers when it was bought by Donsco Corp., Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, in 1993. The basic metalcasting training was held at the foundry.

"The foundry itself became a classroom," Voigt said. "For some employees who knew their job, the training may have seen redundant, but for other new ones it was important. It was a great learning experience for everyone involved - but it didn't happen overnight."

The cost for the training was covered in part by a state grant. In many cases, grants are available to businesses that need to train large groups of new workers. More than 70 employees received training during the seven months following the reopening of the foundry in 1993, said Donsco Director of Human Resources Fred Ihrig. Many of the new hires had no knowledge of the metalcasting industry. Today, the foundry employment has grown to 150 people, and the same people who didn't know what a casting was four years ago are producing quality castings, he said.

A similar situation occurred more recently in Iowa, when John Deere Co. needed to train 500 employees in basic metalcasting (furnace operation, molding and coremaking). The company turned to Doug Miller at the Univ. of Northern Iowa Metalcasting Center in Cedar Falls. The training is being done at the Metalcasting Center in its newly expanded foundry lab, which is capable of nearly every kind of molding process. Miller said the university has trained about 75 employees thus far in basic metalcasting.

"UNI has the classrooms and a good quiet foundry facility for training," John Deere Human Resources Manager John Bracken said. "I think we will use them for more technical training in the future."

The UNI Metalcasting Center started in 1991 from state grants designed to bolster the Iowa manufacturing industry. Though most of the grants funding the consulting and research work the center offers have expired, the organization continues to help foundries, both in Iowa and across the Midwest on an individual basis. "We're more than willing to help foundries with their research and training needs," Miller said.