In the spirit of collaboration,
Sheffield Forgemasters’ foundry team has undertaken exchange visits with
Newby Foundries Ltd based in the West Midlands. Earlier this year, delegates from Newby Foundries visited Sheffield Forgemasters’Brightside Lane Foundry to look at casting processes for ultra-large castings, and the Sheffield Forgemasters foundry team then visited Newby’s facilities to see first-hand the manufacture of smaller-scale, bulk castings. The reciprocal visits enabled teams from both companies to compare very different casting techniques and to see if there are any technologies or processes which could be transferable.
Paul Ashcroft, Sheffield Forgemasters’ operation lead (foundry), said: “The initiative to host exchange visits with Newby Foundry was a great way to see the different processes that can be adopted for the manufacture of castings in vastly different sizes. We took a team to Birmingham including apprentices, shopfloor and technical staff, to look at how Newby manufactures thousands of repeat, smaller castings, as opposed to the tlow-volume repeat work we carry out at Sheffield Forgemasters.
“It was interesting to see some of the new technologies adopted at Newby, such as core shooters, 3-D sand printing, automated fettling, co-ordinated measuring machines and moulding track systems, which aren’t yet available for the large-scale work that we do.”
Newby Foundries specialise in smaller-scale iron and steel sand casting, rapid prototyping and investment casting at much higher production rates than Sheffield Forgemasters, which specialises in large, bespoke castings up to 350-plus tonnes in weight.
Mark Duncombe, a metallurgist at Newby Foundries, added: “The difference in scale between Sheffield Forgemasters and Newby Foundries manufacturing is vast, and it was great for us to see how that scale of casting is managed. All of our team have worked with parts that can probably reach 40/50kg each and for us, that would be classed as a ‘big job’. We were all in awe at the sheer size of the parts Sheffield Forgemasters produces.“