SFSA Casteel Reporter – February 2024

Last year we did a strategic issues planning session after the Research Review and identified workforce development as the highest ranked set of action item, Retain (and attract) workforce – this is the subject of this month’s Casteel Commentary.

Cast in Steel 2024 Competition

This year’s competition is shaping up to be the largest yet, with 44 teams from 34 universities mentored by 30 industry partners registered to compete! The competition will be held at the Grohmann Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 22, 2024, with the awards presented on April 23, 2024. Everyone is welcome to attend the competition and awards ceremony.

SFSA is once again collaborating with the Foundry Education Foundation (FEF) for this year’s competition. The winning team’s Halligan Bars will be on display at the FEF booth during the AFS MetalCasting Congress. After the MetalCasting Congress, the bars will be put up for auction through FEF.  All proceeds go toward FEF’s scholarship program.  This year our presenting sponsor is, the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) Program run by the Innovation Capabilities and Modernization (ICAM) Office in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial policy (ASD IBP).

Riser Sleeve Modeling

Risers are a critical part of the gating system for steel castings, and understand and calculate sleeve performance accurately will help foundries gate more efficiently and reduce scrap. A working group has been created to standardize and quantify sleeve quality and effectiveness. This is being accomplished through roundtable discussions with industry and research professionals, collecting testing procedures and technical papers on the topic (located on the SFSA Wiki), and foundry round-robin testing. 

The group has begun meeting regularly and is open to all who want to participate. If you are interested in participating, please contact Tory (tory@sfsa.org) to be added to the group. The next meeting, held on 2/20/24 10-11 am CST, will include a webinar from University of Iowa researchers Christoph Beckermann and Richard Hardin on the topic of riser sleeves in simulation.

77th Technical & Operating Conference

The T&O this past December was another success thanks to the authors, workshop presenters and T&O Committee.  With an incredible high of 67 papers presented by member foundries represented at the conference, it was a tremendous opportunity to work together in advancing our industry.  We all benefit from foundry members, academic partners, and government personnel who come together to make our industry better.  Planning is already underway for this year’s conference; tentatively scheduled for December 11-14 in Chicago.  If you would like to recommend a topic and presenter for the 78th T&O, please contact Dave.

Production Welding Meeting

Who:  persons responsible for production welding of steel castings such as department supervisor and metallurgist, but also persons dealing internally or externally with welding specifications.
Registration:  Please RSVP by email before 3/15 (include names, emails and if attending dinner 4/1 or 4/2).

Repair welding is a poor term for manufacturing steel castings as detailed in our white paper.  Recently, ASTM A488 has been changed to reflect the more accurate term of “production welding”.  On Tuesday, April 2^nd, we will host a steel casting welding seminar in the greater Milwaukee, WI area.  Walt Sperko will discuss a range of fundamental topics related to welding steel castings in his “What Foundry Supervision Needs to Know about Welding Codes” seminar:

• Welding process review (SMAW, GMAW, FCAW, GTAW)
• Reading and applying variables:  essential, nonessential and supplemental essential
• Comparison of welding procedure and performance qualification requirements in Section IX, A-488, Tech Pub 248/278
• Impact qualified welding procedures
• Filler metal/electrode selection
• Development of standard welding procedures for castings
• Basic steel welding metallurgy
• Major/minor repair issues

Attendees will tour Northern Stainless Wednesday (4/3) morning.  There is no cost for the meeting – travel, hotel, meals, etc. are the attendees’ responsibility.  Please bring your own safety shoes for the tour.  Final details for the meeting will be sent to all registered attendees.

Making Steel Casting webinar series

Our first opportunity related to the topic of improving simulation will be an upcoming webinar series on Making Steel Castings.  This will cover everything from designing the rigging through solidification in the mold (not secondary operations of finishing, heat treatment, NDT, etc.).  The series will focus on solidification – the past, present and future, and will be formatted as a discussion with SFSA alumni George Hartay, Steve Gear and Tim Hays.  Of specific interest will be pulling forward the concepts from Robert Wlodawer’s book, “Directional Solidification of Steel Castings”.  Registration for the first episode will be sent to members in the near future.  If you have any questions, please contact Dave.

Future Leaders and Next Gen Mfg meetings

Please save the date for our next Future Leaders and Next Generation Manufacturing meetings.  To be held in Pittsburgh, PA the week of May 13^th..

Market News

In December, year over year stainless bookings outpaced shipments for the first time since April 2022. Steel casting bookings continues the trend towards parity to year ago levels and shipments continue to trend downwards.  Reported backlog for both carbon and low alloy steel and stainless are at 9.5 weeks which is down 25% year over year for steel and down 19% for stainless.

ITR has upgraded their inflation-adjusted GDP forecast for 2024 by 3.3% based on a number factors so they are no longer anticipating a recession in 2024. Indications are that GDP will rise in the first quarter, will fall slightly in the second quarter, and then resume a gradual increase for the second half of the year.

Despite the positive outlook on a macro level, the industrial sector is still expected to decline in 2024 by varying degrees. Following disciplined capital expenditure plans by the oil and gas sector, only a mild contraction is expected for this sector. Markets that are more interest rate sensitive, such as US Construction Machinery New Orders or US Heavy-Duty Truck Production, are likely to contract more acutely.

Casteel Commentary

Last year we did a strategic issues planning session after the Research Review and identified workforce development as the highest ranked set of action item, Retain (and attract) workforce – this one action received over 10% of the votes, which underlines the need for people with the knowledge and ability within the steel foundry industry.

Going back in SFSA prior efforts, in 2015 workforce development was one of the three priorities identified by the SFSA Board.  In 2005 SFSA members identified skilled labor as the most significant challenge facing our industry.

The concern about the capability and capacity of steel foundries to provide the supply of castings needed to ensure economic and national security for North America has been a prominent concern for the past two years.  With the Executive Order 14017 after COVID exposed the reliance for critical items on global sourcing, DoD identified castings and forgings as a concern.  In the report identifying our ability to meet future needs, workforce shortages were a prominent concern.  This interest has led to other roadmaps and strategic sessions with DoE, NIST, America Makes, etc. that I have participated in.  The policy makers and leadership in these communities have not yet begun to grapple with the challenges that we face as capital intensive industries burdened with costs and requirements that limit our abilities. 

From our planning based on the priorities identified in 2015, SFSA has organized and invested, with DoD support, significant resources to enhance labor productivity by automating job shop manual operations that can be better accomplished with robotics and manipulators rather than human effort.  Grinding is a good operation where people are not able to provide the force necessary to efficiently remove steel from the product.  SFSA is investing in vison for product identification, grinding, welding and arc air operations.

In addition to automation, SFSA has taken a leadership role in engaging young people to interest them in becoming a part of our industry.  Our first and most successful effort has been Cast in Steel https://www.castinsteel.org. The program has had over 600 students with over 30 universities competing.

The 6^th annual Cast in Steel competition is in full swing.  University students will create a Halligan Bar exploiting the casting manufacturing process from design conception to performance.  The requirements are the bar should weigh no more than 6 kg (13.2 lbs.) and should not be longer than 1 m (40 in.) in overall length.

This year’s competition is shaping up to be the largest yet, with 44 teams from 34 universities mentored by 30 industry partners registered to compete! The competition will be held at the Grohmann Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 22, 2024, with the awards presented on April 23, 2024. 

It is not too late for you to reach out to a local college and compete.  This year before the awards, on Tuesday, we’d like to give any member an opportunity to connect with the students and professors.

• Two-minute pre-awards presentation on your foundry – share a little about the steel castings you make.
• Company tabletops – share company information and job postings for full-time and intern positions
• Member lunch – meet with students, professors and other SFSA members.

If you are interested in any of these, please RSVP and get further details from Renee (rmueller@sfsa.org).  Note, even if you cannot make the event, all members are welcome to share current intern and full-time job postings, which will be emailed to the Cast in Steel participants.

If your plant is interested in recruiting coop, interns, or employees, this is a great opportunity to meet these students who already have an interest in our industry.

We are also starting this year a new outreach to encourage younger people, 14-18 years old, to develop an interest in Casting Dreams, https://castingdreams.org/ .  This is like a 4H competition where young people can submit and compete to make any casting they want and provide a story about it. 

This effort is being done with the support of all the other metal casting organizations.  It is ideal to allow you to reach out to local youth groups in schools, home schooled, Scouts, Maker spaces, etc. 

This effort could be coordinated with another program to encourage young people who have little academic interests but are capable to consider manufacturing as a meaningful career.  We are working with Dave Hataj at Craftsman with Character to try to provide these young people with a sense of purpose and work and give them a chance to creatively work in our industry, https://www.cwcharacter.org/ . 

In all these efforts for our industry and our future, we need your support and participation.  Many of you have been extraordinarily active and supportive.  I would encourage anyone in any size plant to participate, our future depends on these young people learning to love the casting industry as we do.

Raymond