FARO provides the solution for AluCast

By FARO Technologies
schedule25th Jun 19

Based in the heart of the Black Country in Wednesbury, West Midlands, AluCast Ltd is an award-winning aluminium foundry that is an acknowledged leader in the supply of high integrity structural parts. The company offers an all-embracing concept to production service, including full technical support throughout the manufacturing cycle.

The ISO 9001:2015 and ISO/TS 16949:2016 accredited company has the ability to manufacture castings of up to 50 kgs in weight and has a weekly capacity of approximately 25 tonnes using both manual and automated production methods.

AluCast’s high-pressure die casting facility is able to manufacture castings of up to 3 + kgs and can deliver high production rates of up to 200 castings per hour. Gravity die production methods are widely used for the manufacture of medium to high volume production. This process uses a permanent mould, resulting in a near net shape product.

AluCast’s Sand casting production method can be employed for the manufacture of prototypes as well as for regular production items.

In addition to providing first-class foundry facilities, AluCast is able to manufacture fully machined parts to customers’ specifications in its well-equipped machining facility.

The drive for improved fuel efficiency has prompted the global automotive industry to develop ever lighter components. As a result, over the past decade AluCast’s advanced aluminium casting and machining provision has enjoyed impressive levels of growth and the company is now a major supplier to the demanding automotive sector.

To ensure that the company’s 100 plus skilled workforce are able to keep pace with increasing demands, significant investments have recently been made in innovative casting plant and high-quality machine tools.

To help the company’s important inspection provision keep-pace with its increased production volumes, AluCast quality and technical director, Martin Haynes recently began a search for an accurate, yet speedy metrology solution.

After been tasked with casting a range of urgently required prototype parts for an important customer, AluCast completed all of the relevant casting processes in record time. Having been told that its parts were now ready, except for the required dimensional inspection process and that this process would take another day, the customer suggested that, to speed-up the parts’ delivery, it would visit AluCast’s facility and perform on-site inspection with its own FARO ScanArm.

Impressed by the speed the FARO equipment was set-up, so soon after the customer’s arrival and the FARO ScanArm’s ability to quickly scan each of the components and gather all of the required accurate data, Martin Haynes was convinced that a FARO ScanArm was the ideal answer to AluCast’s challenging dimensional inspection needs.

He explains: “Although, prior to witnessing our customer’s FARO ScanArm in action, we were considering several inspection options from major metrology companies, the outstanding performance of the FARO equipment persuaded us that this was the way to go. As well as being impressed by the dimensional accuracy achieved and the clear presentation of the captured data, we were astonished at the equipment’s phenomenal speed of operation. In fact, we estimated that the inspection results our customer achieved in just one hour, would have taken us over eight hours with the use of our existing equipment.

“Soon after our customer’s visit, to help confirm our opinion we organised a practical demonstration of a FARO Edge ScanArm® HD on a wide cross section of both our cast and machined components. As previously witnessed, FARO UK’s sales engineer was able to quickly set the instrument up and to complete rapid, precise scanning routines on each of the parts we presented. Confident of the Edge ScanArm HD’s capability, an order was soon placed with FARO UK.”

Martin Haynes concludes: “Our FARO Edge ScanArm HD has delivered on all of the promises made by the staff of FARO UK in terms of simplicity, accuracy and speed-of-use. As well as the inspection processes, we purchased the FARO ScanArm for, each day we are finding new uses for it. So important to our inspection provision has it become, we now wonder how we managed without our new FARO Edge ScanArm HD.”

FARO Technologies UK Ltd

Tel: 02476 217690

Email: [email protected]

www.faro.com


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