47 COMMUNICATION ISSUE Continued on next page Eco-Conscious Pressure-Assisted Casting Machine Whether you call it being “green,” eco-conscious, environmentally friendly or simply reducing your carbon footprint—everyone realizes that today’s foundries need to reduce costly waste streams along with high energy costs to make cost competitive castings. JOHN HALL, VALENTIN GEORGIEV, JAY FRITZKE CMH Manufacturing Company ARTICLE TAKEAWAYS: • How to reduce energy and disposal costs • Pressure-assisted versus low pressure casting systems The bottom line is that being competitive requires both energy and material efficiencies combined with protecting the environment. Reducing energy usage in the foundry is critical to lowering casting costs. The old thinking was that it was too costly to reduce your environmental impact. Today’s newer technologies are making it easier to reduce energy costs and environmental impact at the same time. It is well known to all in our industry that metal casting is one of the most energy-intensive industries in the US, as you need large amounts of electrical and heat energy just to melt metals. High energy consumption is so important to this industry, that most foundries typically undertake an energy audit to understand their costs to help identify ways to reduce their consumption. While this industry has always used recycled metal to produce new castings, there are plenty of other by-products that have ended up in landfills – increasing disposal costs which results in reduced profits, and of course increased overall environmental impact. The casting process generates many types of waste: most notably, spent sand, combustion, and hydraulic fluid/lubricant waste. Foundry equipment by design is built tough. It has to be in order to endure the demanding and harsh foundry environment. However, as technology continues to improve this heavy-duty equipment, it is being designed to make more efficient use of materials, reduce energy, and reduce waste, which in turn reduces disposal costs and increases profit margins. The challenges to having a sustainable and successful foundry in the USA are plentiful. Between staffing and supply chain issues, everyone has their hands full. But the opportunity, especially now—to encourage reshoring of castings—provides strong incentive for evaluating processes (often with value stream mapping) to identify areas of waste, and energy audits to really understand how much energy is costing your foundry. To overcome these challenges, we look to equipment technology and design to effectively make the entire process more cost efficient and compliant to environmental concerns. We recently introduced an industry-first pressure-assisted casting system with these specific goals.
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