We are looking for a New Casting Company
A low volume facility that uses a HUNTER 30 X 32 Machine.
There are several indisputable truths about sand castings:
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There is no such thing as a perfect casting.
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No two castings are exactly alike.
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The equipment producing the castings is only as good as its operators.
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The crew producing the castings must 'give a damn' about the final product.
When I received my first order from B***e Sand Castings, the parts were in fairly good condition as far as production flaws were concerned. However, each and every piece was riddled with numerous dents, scrapes and gouges on their corners and edges due to the rough handling of the parts by the production crew.
When a freshly cast part was removed from the mold, still hot from the casting process, it was literally thrown onto a pile of other castings, resulting in dozens of unnecessary blemishes, on every part, that I had to deal with.
Although the parts were structurally sound and could be detailed and sculptured to an acceptable finish, within a half to a full hour, spending that much time on each casting just to repair someone's carelessness got old pretty quickly. Repairing a full order of 220 castings translated into several 50-hour work-weeks – for nothing.
Some of the gouges were so deep that I had to weld in some aluminum filler material, just to bring the flaw up to the level of the surrounding material, before I could detail it.
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The casting company attempted to blame the flaws on the shipping company, but that was instantly rebuked because the flaws were all shot-peened, which is a step in the casting process - therefore proving that the damage had been done before they had been shipped.
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After watching their typical promo video where they state that satisfying the customer is their main concern and that they won't quit until the customer is happy, I decided to write the owner about my concerns with my last order. His response was about what I expected, and I quote:
"Once you have your tooling returned, I would highly suggest you start looking for a new low-volume foundry that will polish and bubble wrap and care for your castings on a one casting to casting basis. (I never asked for them to be polished, just to be treated in a manner that doesn't destroy them...) Expect to pay a lot more for your castings as well, as you will have to pay for the extra expense that would have to go into the casting to give you the desired end result that you are looking for." (I need to pay extra for this?)
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The 24 photos below show the damage on just 4 rear castings.
There were 220 castings in total - (front and rear) - all with similar damage.
Although I thought I had seen everything, nothing could have prepared me for the condition of my final order of front castings. This was over the top, even for this company, and almost looked like the extensive array of blemishes had been done on purpose - with a die grinder!
I talked to some experts, and they agreed that the production team had probably not used a sufficient amount of a 'separation agent' when producing the parts, so they aluminum stuck to the molds, causing them to be pulled up into hundreds of 'peaks' that needed to be die-grinded away without any regard for the final finish.
So, I contacted several other foundries and was told that the patterns for my castings had been permanently bonded to the match plates, so any foundry that took on my order would have to be cast on the exact same casting machine that mine were cast on - which was a HUNTER 30 x 32.
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Finally, to add insult to injury, this company just changed their name
from B***e Sand Castings to B***e Quality Castings.
Hey, I'm not making this stuff up...
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In addition to the above mentioned blemishes caused by carelessness, every single front casting, right and left sides had a huge flaw at the shock absorber mounting area that had to be ground, sanded and detailed before the final machining could be accomplished. (And there were over 100 of these.)
The four bottom photos show the before and after condition of the shock mounting area.