In so many stories we write about in Metal Casting Design & Purchasing, the spark to convert a component or assembly into a cast part started with a visit from a metal casting supplier. This makes sense. As much as you know about your part’s function, requirements and application, the metal caster understands the capabilities and advantages of casting and how to achieve them.

My husband and I are in the process of remodeling our kitchen. We both know how we want the kitchen to look and function for our needs as a family. But neither of us are handy or skilled in design, so we worked with a contractor who showed us how to achieve our needs and even introduced ways to improve function that we hadn’t even thought about.

You probably know some parts in your shop would be more cost-effective if produced in a different way, but have little time to explore what process to use and how to adjust the design or calculate the savings. This is where the metal caster—your own kitchen contractor—comes in to help.

As helpful as a list of signs might be (we offer several on page 18), the most important resource for converting a part to metalcasting is a metal casting supplier. Many deal with changing designs from assemblies to single cast parts regularly.

This type of information is the cornerstone of why the magazine exists.  Our mission is to share ways to make the metalcasting process more accessible and help you weigh when it is the right manufacturing method (or when it is not). This is reflected in our name Metal Casting Design & Purchasing.

Our cover has a new look this issue. In order to better establish our goal of providing content to help designers and purchasers create and source cast metal components, we have updated our logo to emphasize this. It is a reminder to our readers, and us, as editors, that YOU are our audience and our content should always be chosen with the intent of helping you do your job well.  

Thank you for your readership, and as always, please share your stories and comments.

Click here to see this story as it appears in the March/April 2017 issue of MCDP.