Foundry - the symbiosis of craftsmanship and innovation
Gray cast iron – a success story
Cast iron, also known as gray cast iron, is an extremely successful material and its annual production worldwide is greater than that of all other cast materials.
Casting – a technique through the ages
Five times more expensive than silver and twice as expensive as gold: that was iron in Mesopotamia over 4,000 years ago.
It was probably also in Mesopotamia that people first mastered the art of casting iron.
The Chinese must have known how to cast iron as early as the time of the “Warring Empires” (403 – 221 BC).
In 1953, iron casting molds from this era were found.
The oldest preserved casting, a cooking stove, dates from the Han Dynasty (25 – 220 AD).
The cast iron roofs on Chinese temples, which are often over 1000 years old, are still impressive today.
Gray cast iron has excellent properties
There are several reasons for this, of which the most interesting for the user is probably the economic efficiency as the sum of material, manufacturing, operating and disposal costs.
However, the properties of this material group are also technically attractive, for example the adjustable, favorable mechanical, physical and technological properties.
The excellent damping behavior in particular makes this material suitable for applications in dynamically loaded components.
It also has good casting properties, which allow the production of cast parts with highly complex geometries, excellent surface quality and high reproduction accuracy.
It is also a robust material that is highly insensitive to fluctuations in influencing variables, manufacturing and application conditions.
When manufactured and used properly, cast iron with flake graphite and spheroidal graphite is a high-performance material with no major sensitivities, which opens up a wide range of applications even today in the high-tech age.
Modern construction methods and manufacturing processes also give this material lightweight construction potential that can be exploited in future applications.
The foundry with the plus
At WESO, over 400 employees manufacture high-quality gray cast iron products to the highest standards in one of the most modern foundries in Germany.
We cast fully automated castings weighing up to 120 kg in the materials EN-GJL and EN-GJS.
We are a foundry company that sees itself as a full-service provider for all aspects of casting.
Before casting, the innovative implementation of the results provided by research and the in-house development department takes place.
This relates in particular to the improvement of material properties, which combines the optimization of the casting process with the performance required by the customer.
Thanks to the targeted interaction of IT-supported processes in organization, production and logistics as well as state-of-the-art foundry technology, WESO-Aurorahütte can react quickly to special customer requirements and offer solutions.
This ranges from design to the ready-to-install component and also includes post-processing using machining technology and coloring.
We cast for customers in the heating technology, rail vehicle construction, agricultural machinery, transmission and mechanical engineering, vehicle and refrigeration technology sectors – WESO, the plus in casting.
Sylvia Schurat
Head of Sales
Tel +49 64 62 / 921 – 189
Fax +49 64 62 / 921 – 489
sylvia.schurat@weso.de
