AFS Corporate Member Fall River Foundry, named after the Wisconsin town in which it was founded in 1953, is one of the largest job-shop manufacturers of brass castings in the world. Situated 30 miles northeast of Madison, the foundry employs about 200 people and delivers between 1.3 to 1.6 million pounds of finished product per month. 

A green sand nonferrous foundry that produces custom, lead-free castings for brass plumbing goods including water meters and potable water infrastructure, Fall River Foundry is one of two companies operating within the Fall River Group––the second is Rheocast Co. One of the few remaining brass diecasters in the U.S., it also specializes in aluminum diecasting. Fall River Group also comprises a full, onsite machining shop with 45 employees and offers key value-add services such as leak testing on the green sand side, and polishing and painting in the diecasting business. 

Earlier this year, Casting Source connected with Brennen Weigel, president and CEO of Fall River Group, to explore improvements in the foundry and industry trends. Excerpts from that conversation follow in our Q&A below. 

Casting Source: What would you say is the “best-kept secret” in the brass casting sector?

Weigel: Something that people might not fully appreciate is the recyclable nature of our products. We purchase ingot that is produced from recycled materials; then we produce a casting, and at end of the casting’s life, that material is recycled again. There’s a real value to that. 

We also buy back a lot of our own old product. We have customers––especially in the water meter industry––who go through and re-meter a town. They’ll have somebody disassemble the old meters, and then we’ll buy that scrap back, or my ingots supplier buys it back. So, we’re constantly seeing product coming back into another life.

CS: You’re a foundry that sources its materials domestically, right? Is that a high priority for customers?

Weigel: It depends on the size of the customer. But yes, in general, it is. More so because we have documentation that we are not using conflict materials. That’s a big thing that comes up every year––especially among the bigger, publicly-traded companies. They are very conscious about any materials coming from countries engaging in forced labor.  

CS: In a nutshell, why does a customer choose brass versus any other metal? Is it only because of its resistance to corrosion? 
Weigel: That’s certainly an important factor. A lot of times it’s specified by the municipalities or the end user. We’ve got the plumbing brass goods that we deal with, and then there’s also more of your engineering alloys, which get you into bronze. For those alloys, you need the physical properties of tensile strengths and elongation.

CS: Tell us about your customers and the end-use applications of the brass castings Fall River Foundry produces.

Weigel: Our forte is pressure tight thin-wall castings. This foundry has been designed around producing water meters––probably 65%–70% of our business relates to water metering and water infrastructure. 

In water metering, you’ve got five major players here in the United States, and we’re producing castings for pretty much all of them. One still has their own captive foundry, but all the other companies have elected to work with us, either because they’ve never had a foundry or, over the years, through consolidations and buyouts, they’ve gotten out of the manufacturing part of it and became more assembly-type facilities.

CS: And on the water infrastructure side, federal spending must be kind of important to your business.

Weigel: Hugely. This administration right now is putting a big push on infrastructure––and our water infrastructure is antiquated in this country. There are still cities with lead pipe. People involved with AFS are probably aware that a number of big brass players are building new foundries with the assurances that this money is coming, and the government wants them to be able to supply these products. So, there’s a big investment going into water infrastructure and the companies that supply those components. 

CS: Is brass castings an expanding sector?

Weigel: It’s growing. There are new technologies coming out, and we do have some new ultrasonic styles of metering that are emerging, so there’s no moving components. This has been around for a few years but we’re seeing more of that transition. The mechanical meters that have been around for 60 years––that’s our bread and butter. What’s changing there is that instead of somebody actually having to physically read the meter, it’s now all cellular internet based. So, the components going on top of the vessel have changed, but the actual design and the mechanics of the meter have not. 

Water has become a commodity, and it’s a revenue generator. We see municipalities updating with new electronics that can detect if your home has a leaky faucet or the toilets are leaking. They’re focusing on water conservation, especially in the western part of the country.

CS: What are your customers talking about these days? What concerns or challenges are on their minds?

Weigel: Between ’22 and ’23, as we were still coming out of the pandemic, everybody was panic ordering. So, if they needed 100 parts and we couldn’t deliver 100 parts, then they’d order 300 parts. We were caught off guard a little, and obviously everybody’s dealing with labor. That’s a big item for us,too. Labor and materials supply are both areas of concern for our customers. 

Fortunately, we’ve got one major supplier that we’ve been doing business with for many years––and between our largest customer and our metal supplier, we’ve got a great partnership. Everybody is on the same page, and because of the commitment we have with this supplier, we won’t be affected  by any material disruptions.

CS: Are customers in the brass/water sector optimistic about 2024? 

Weigel: They’re saying the market will be flat, but I would say everybody’s looking at some growth this year. The numbers are all over the place, from 5% up to 15%. 

CS: It seems that casting customers like to see foundries embracing more automation. What’s your strategy with adoption of automation and robotics?

Weigel: We are currently in the process of installing an additional automatic molding machine that’s going to replace some of our manual lines. But we’ll probably never get 100% away from our manual lines. It’s just the nature of our business and product mix––we offer high production, high volume order quantities all the way to orders as small as 25. It’s the same way in our core rooms.

We are pretty progressive when it comes to robotics. The easy, low hanging fruit was our machine shop. We’ve been able to consolidate from three employees running a couple of different cells to now one individual operating three different cells, thanks to the automation. This has happened over the years because technology has advanced, and the optics of robotics have gotten better. They can recognize the orientation of a casting, which has helped us out tremendously. I’ve got a couple of young engineers who are very good at that. So now we’re trying to look at how we can incorporate more robotics into the foundry. 
Automatic molding is easy. And we already have automatic pouring. We do have automated core machines, but they still have operators––the cores are automatically ejecting out of the core boxes. We’ve also got some automatic palletizing. 

CS: Any other improvements going on at Fall River Foundry?

Weigel: We did recently finish expanding our locker room because we were at capacity with that. We weren’t able to bring any more employees in because we were just too jammed up. We’ll probably be looking at expanded shifts down the road, because we’re not at full capacity in a number of our areas throughout the shop. We’ve still got about 35% capacity left.
Melting capacity will be another thing that we’ll be addressing in the coming years, and improving pollution abatement––we need to upgrade our bag houses for the future because they’re just getting older.

CS: How about at Rheocast––is there as much emphasis on automation there?

Weigel: Yes, on the die casting side, we’ve expanded a lot with automatic pouring and automatic ladeling. That technology has been around for a while so we’re getting current with it. We’re looking at where else we can incorporate or expand robotics, like in our grinding room. There are robotic grinders that we’re looking at for higher volume. We are also looking at automatic loading on our punch presses. That’s where the improved optics on robotics help, because it can orientate that casting before it gets put into the trim die. So that’s something I can see us expanding on. 

CS: What takeaway message would you like to leave with the casting buyer and designer community?

Weigel: I would encourage OEM engineers and purchasing personnel to go out and tour their foundries and learn what foundries are actually capable of. 

When I first got into this business, I was dealing with casting buyers who were members of AFS. Now, in many cases, you’ve got people who are commodities managers; they’re buying all kinds of different components, and they don’t always understand what is involved in making castings––that it’s a product created for them specifically, not something that we’re just pulling off the shelf. 

Today’s young engineers are good but they don’t always understand our process and what you can and cannot do in a mold. Visiting a foundry is a great way to educate yourself.