It is with a heavy heart that I pen this last editorial for Metal Casting Design & Purchasing. By the time you read this column, I will have left the magazine to pursue a new career.  After 19 years in metalcasting, a new challenge awaits me.

So let me start by thanking you, our loyal readers of Metal Casting Design & Purchasing.  I was lucky enough to be part of the team that started this magazine in 1999 (it was titled Engineered Casting Solutions back then). Our focus was serving a niche—buyers and designers of metal castings—that needed information on how to better source and design engineered metal components.

Through the years, we have grown our qualified circulation tremendously and built a name for ourselves by being a resource to you. You have attended our summits and trade shows, you have participated in our casting competition, and you have submitted articles and ideas to help educate your peers. You have helped to build a community of buyers and designers looking to support a casting supply chain. That was our dream when we started the magazine and you are helping us fulfill that dream.

Goodbyes are always difficult.  We all invest sweat equity in our professions. But I can leave knowing the casting supply chain in North America is better than when we started this magazine.  There is greater communication, an increase in education and knowledge exchange, and a stronger appreciation for local sourcing.  The basic foundation of a magazine is the strength of the information it shares, and Metal Casting Design & Purchasing shines in that exchange.

But the advancement of the supply chain is not done.  Everyone is always looking to do things better, faster and stronger.  Additive manufacturing is changing the way all manufacturing conducts business.  Metalcasting has been one of the early and significant adopters of this technology from its first appearances in the 1990s to its full development today. New technologies and processes await to steal the headlines as the wave of the future.

To those of you battling in the trenches every day, I truly wish you good luck. Manufacturing is the backbone of our economy and our society. The next generation is beginning to understand that fact. And metal castings serve as the foundation of most manufacturing.

Be proud of who you are and what you accomplish every day. Creating and building incredible machinery is an awesome accomplishment.

Thank you, goodbye and good luck.

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