Fundicion

Foundaries

Introduction: A foundry is where the elaborate metal casting process takes place. A metal foundry may specialize in making one particular item or a variety of products using different alloys. Based on the production requirement, there are small foundries that employ few people and large industrial foundries that employ thousands of workers.

History: Foundry operations of the present day is an outcome of thousands of years of experimenting with different metals and casting methods. Very little documented evidence of casting and foundry operations are available of the ancient time. The proof of castings are in the form of jeweleries, household items and religious times that were unearthed during excavations or preserved as historic relics.

The foundry process was first documented circa 1500 by Vannoccio Biringuccio who is know as the "father of the foundry industry". Rapid growth in the casting industyr took place in the industrialisation age. With the invention of machines and equipment in the industiral age, casting could be done on a large scale. The scientific revolution in this century increased the demand of casting products for automobiles, machines, weapons, etc. In the modern era, metal casting finds its application from kitchen wares to aircraft components.

Types of Foudries: Depending upon the type of end users, the wide variety of molding or the casting process can be basically divided into- Commercial foundry and Hobby foundry.

Commercial Foundries: Here the production activity is on a large scale and in abidance to the international standards of manufacturing practice. This type of foundry offers semi-finished or fully finished products like Railroad Equipment, Machine Tools, Farm Machinery, Mining Machine, etc. Major types of casting employed in commercial foudries are sand casting, die casting, investmet casting and lost foam casting. According the type of foundry activity that the foundries are involved in, commercial foundries are known as:

Types of Commercial Foundries:

» Captive foundry: These foundries are part of a manufacturing company which uses the casted products to meet the companies own production need.

» Independent foundry: Here casting are produced as per the customers specification.

» Jobbing foundry: These are fully equipped foundry which does not have its own individual casting business, but undertake contractual casting for other companies. Mostly, production are taken up for small quantity only.

» Production foundry: In such foundries casting operations are done in bulk for one types of casting. The advantage in this method is that this fully equipped foundry unit can deliver flawless products at the most economical rates.

» Semi production shop: It is the kind of operations where the company operations follow both the jobbing and the production casting.

Hobby Foundries: These are small but fully equipped foundry units setup inside a house or in the backyards. Such foundries are set up by amateurs who loves tocreate casting products according to ones desire. The home foundries also serves other purpose like mending the worn our metal items and for casting special part or component that are not available in the market.

Basic aspects to be considered for setting up foundries:

Many factors are taken into account while setting up a foundry operation. The basic settings are done in consultation with experts and by taking suggestions from potential customer who are the ultimate

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