Iron and Steel Foundries
SIC 3320
NAICS 331511
Iron and steel foundries manufacture malleable, ductile, investment, and gray iron castings. These establishments generally operate on a job or order basis, manufacturing castings for sale to others or for interplant transfer.
Foundries are factories that produce metal castings. The foundry industry is a highly fragmented yet essential element of the modern global economy. Metal castings are required in numerous machinery applications, including automobiles, aircraft, and other transportation equipment. Beginning in the late 1990s and continuing into the 2000s, however, castings of iron and steel faced continued competition from aluminum, zinc, various alloys, and plastics. As a result, the more traditional iron and steel castings lost market share and demand for some has been stagnant.
According to Modern Casting, the foundry industry was recovering from the manufacturing recession of the early 2000s, and was expected to continue growing through the decade. Imports in particular were projected to see a 5 percent annual increase, with exports also seeing annual growth. Most of the growth was expected to come from manufacturers of light metal castings, such as steel. The hardest hit segment, on the other hand, would be gray iron castings.
Metal casting production remains fragmented due to several influences. In a minority of cases—about 13 percent in the United States—metals are cast directly by manufacturers of end products rather than by specialized foundries. The independent foundries are often highly specialized and serve specific niches, such as automotive brake and powertrain components or turbine equipment for power plants. Ongoing consolidation has greatly reduced the number of ferrous foundries in operation, but it has not given rise to any major producers that can be said to dominate the industry, either on a global level or on a national level in leading countries.
Most of theworld's metal castings are ferrous, which means they ultimately derive from iron ore, as is the case with all types of iron and steel. The casting process involves forming metal shapes or structures by pouring molten metal, in this case iron or steel, into molds or dies. Most molds are made of sand, which is able to withstand high temperatures, but wax and other materials may be used. Wax is used in a form of metal casting known as investment casting. When a die is used, the process is often called die casting. Die casting differs from other methods in that metal shapes are actively pressed in dies using force, whereas other forms of casting allow the metal cast to passively take the shape of a mold. The various production techniques offer different advantages of strength, precision, and cost effectiveness for the casting of different source metals.
The industry is heavily engaged in manufacturing pipes, pipe fittings, and numerous mechanical components. However, other segments of the industry are growing in response to changing market demands. For example, the automotive industry switched most engine components to aluminum in response to consumer demands for lighter, more fuel-efficient cars. While this move has hurt some gray and ductile iron foundries, it has also forced them to find alternative markets.
The automotive and aerospace industries were historically large customers of gray and ductile iron foundries. So large was the demand that each of the Big Three U.S. automakers owned several foundries of this type. In the 1980s and 1990s these industries were beset in some places with production slumps and requirements for new materials. Although the automotive industry and their suppliers enjoyed a brief period of increased demand in the late 1990s and early 2000, by 2001 the industries faced a recession. Consumer demand has changed, decreasing the iron portion of the automotive casting business. Likewise, in the mid- to late 1980s and early 1990s, the poor financial performance of both the U.S. automotive and aerospace industries forced closings of many self-contained foundries. Outsourcing the casting business was a cheaper alternative than underutilizing plant and labor capacities.
In the European Union (EU), most foundries are small businesses employing less than 50 people. However, as more companies automate molding lines, three work shifts are needed to meet required efficiencies, thus creating a change in the European industry toward larger foundries. Due to the need to reduce costs, many foundries have been taken over by large groups, thereby cutting out the middleman and controlling a wide range of casting technologies.
For at least 5,000 years, humans have been casting metals. Metallurgy began in the Bronze Age, when humans started extracting ores and forming them through melting or hammering. The Iron Age began in Europe around 1100 B.C. Only through contact with Europe did the Americas enter the Iron Age.
Cast iron did not come into commercial use until 1700 when a mechanic named Abraham Darby and some Dutch workmen established a brass foundry in Bristol, England. It was there that he and his men started experimenting with iron as a replacement for brass. This presented technical problems, as brass and iron are completely different pouring mediums in terms of reaction with sand and solidification patterns. Darby received little cooperation from his workers, and the project met with little success. Darby's luck changed when an eager boy working in his shop, John Thomas, said that he thought he "saw where they had missed it." The two worked all through that night and into the next morning before successfully casting a complete iron pot. For proprietary reasons, Darby and Thomas entered into an agreement in which the boy was to remain his servant to keep the secret.
Malleable iron was patented in Europe by Samuel Lucas in 1804. However, he was not the first to develop the alloy. A Frenchman named Reaumur described the process in 1722. In 1630, Englishman David Ramsey was granted a royal patent. In its infancy malleable iron was difficult to attain, due to necessary chemical controls and the lack of equipment to monitor the chemistry. Unfortunately, when a bad batch of malleable iron was made, it was totally useless because it was too brittle and therefore unmachinable. Despite this, its popularity was unparalleled because it offered the fluidity of cast iron and the ductility of steel. In Europe...
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