Does this scenario sound familiar? After years of procuring numerous commodities during your purchasing career, you’ve been assigned to be the casting buyer for your organization. That’s great news. Congratulations! But once you take over this position, you quickly realize there is a vast amount of information you need to learn to get up to speed. 

You may be feeling overwhelmed trying to understand the processes involved in making your company’s castings, the nomenclature used in the industry, and the apparent complexity of the commodity. So, how do you learn more about buying castings? Your casting suppliers and industry sources are definitely the places to start.

In my opinion, you need to gain a certain level of subject-matter expertise to have a successful career as a casting buyer. To help you accomplish this, I’ll share some of the tactics I’ve used when mentoring new buyers into the casting commodity over the years.
To start with, you need to get familiar with your supply base and their capabilities, so schedule a visit to your casting suppliers as soon as you can. While this may seem obvious, my suggestion is to go more in depth than a simple one-day visit. Talk to the foundry and let them know you are interested in learning about the manufacturing process and their unique capabilities by spending several days at their facility. My recommendation is to try to spend 2–4 hours in each production department learning their processes. Try to perform some tasks in each department (with the supplier’s permission) and be as hands-on as possible. 

Extended visits such as this are beneficial for both you and the supplier, since it’s in their best interest to work with an educated customer. Make sure you have all the required PPE (personal protective equipment) required before your visit and review all the safety rules with the foundry when you arrive. Take a look at my column published in the May/June 2022 issue of Casting Source for details on putting together a safe and successful foundry visit. (www.castingsource.com)

Know Your Tooling

Foundry tooling is another area you need to understand as a casting buyer. Work with your foundry’s team to schedule a visit to their pattern shop to see your tooling being built. Most foundries use in-house pattern shops for maintenance and simple pattern construction, and outside pattern shops for more complex pattern and core box construction––you should visit both. As with most foundry-related topics, there will be specific terminology with which you will need to be familiar, and in my experience, the best way to learn this is to see things for yourself. AFS also publishes a list of common foundry terminology that you will find to be helpful. (See page 34 in this issue for a good start.)

A basic knowledge of the materials used in your castings will be beneficial. Scrap metal and alloy prices vary widely and can be affected by many factors, both regionally and globally. The cost of your castings will be impacted by scrap prices, and one of the most-used sources for current scrap prices is the “Scrap Price Bulletin.” If you procure a significant amount of castings, you may want to explore using this subscription service to keep abreast of the latest market trends. As a reference, the “Scrap Price Bulletin” is often the source of scrap prices used by your foundry to adjust their scrap surcharges, and I’ll discuss the topic of surcharges in a future column.

I’m not suggesting that you need to become a metallurgist, but understanding what materials the foundry uses and where they obtain them will be helpful. Depending on the castings you buy, copper, aluminum, chrome, nickel and a variety of other elements may be used in your castings. To help you make sense of this––in addition to discussing the scrap market with your casting source––I recommend searching for courses such as “Metallurgy for the Non-Metallurgist” at your local college. It would be a great way to learn more about the topic. 

On the subject of foundry training, I always suggest that buyers check out the courses offered by AFS. They have both in-person and remote classes available on a wide variety of casting related topics. AFS also holds an annual event in a different city each year that you should attend––this year, it’s CastExpo in Atlanta, April 12–15. There, you can learn about a myriad of topics ranging from machines used in the industry to new processes being developed. A number of talks and seminars presented by industry professionals are specifically developed for casting buyers and end-users like you. You can also speak directly to a number of foundries on the exhibit show floor at the “Cast in North America” aisle––dedicated to foundries showcasing their capabilities. 
And, as I know you are doing, continuing reading Casting Source and Modern Casting to stay current on the industry.