360-1 Casting better?

Krooser said
I have a son who works at the largest grey iron foundry in the world...six blocks from my house.

Waupaca Foundry casts many different products from brake rotors to transmission cases to hot water boilers. They have their own landfill where used sand goes to die.

My son is a foreman in the mill room where the castings are rough ground and have their excess sawed off. Another son spent several years there too.

They operate automated "Disa's" which pour the iron into the molds.

There is a pattern company in town that supplies patterns to them.

One of my boys had a 271HP Ford 289 that was cast here in town...had the WF logo cast in the lifter valley. The foundry president insisted they never cast any engine blocks for Ford until I showed him a photo of the WF logo inside the engine. He was one of the earliest employees from the 1950's and all he could do was scratch his head in disbelief!!!

That "WF" in the lifter valley on a 289 was for Windsor Ford. They cast 289's, 302's, 351's ... Ford uses Windsor and Cleveland a lot on their engine blocks.

I've been inside about 50 times the Saginaw Metal Casting Operations which is a division of GM Powertrain and is now GM's largest aluminum casting facility now. When I was there they were GM's largest "Grey Iron" casting facility and mostly small block Chevy engines and heads. And they have been a manufacturing casting plant for over 100 years on this site. And they actually had special semi trailers hauling molten aluminum up 1-75 from Flint to Saginaw while they were converting over to aluminum casting.

Green sand aluminum – heads: 752,000
Lost foam – heads: 333,700
Precision sand – blocks: 117,500

Products

V-6 aluminum engine blocks and cylinder heads for the Chevrolet Camaro, Cadillac CT6 and XT5 and the GMC Acadia and Canyon.
Front axle assembly for the light-duty Chevrolet Silverado.
Aluminum engine blocks and cylinder heads
2.2L/2.4L L850 I4 blocks
5.3L/6.0L Gen IV V-8 blocks and heads
5.3L/6.2L Gen IV V-8 block pre-machine

But all of this means nothing unless you understand how they make patterns for mold, how some engine blocks are actually pieced together during casting... It's a good field trip. Wear all black clothes. And you've never gotten a sun burn until you've stood a few feet away from a glowing red engine block that is passing by on the conveyors inside the catacombs. Or watch (2) 400 ton hopper/sand shakers busting up used molds that get recycled, equipment that had actually collapsed the original frame work and where resting on the buildings structural W72 structural steel.

Just go buy a bottle or powder graphite and empty it on your face and hands and stand over your open oven door while its on 500 degrees. It's about the same experience.