Manitowoc middle schoolers work with molten metal, create castings

MANITOWOC – Washington Junior High student Tanner Wigand moved slowly and deliberately, a small crucible of molten metal grasped tightly as he moved to pour the liquid-tin into a mold made by a fellow student.

The liquid oozed from the container as Wigand poured, filling a sand-mold made by a classmate before cooling into the shape of a starfish.

"The beauty of the casting process is, however complex you can make that shape, the liquid will fill it," Kevin Fleischmann, an education from the American Foundry Society, told the students. "That's why we can make shapes in the casting process that you can't make in any other manufacturing process."

The students in Jeff Koch's metals technology class at Washington learned how to pour molten metal and create molds as an introduction to careers in the metal-casting industry. Students at Wilson Junior High also took part in the program, called Foundry in a Box.

Eck Industries, a Manitowoc-based aluminum foundry which specializes in casting parts for airplane engines, military vehicles, and hybrid engines, sponsored the program in Manitowoc schools. Employees and staff at the business raised funds as a way to honor the second-generation owner of the company, Robert Eck, who died Sept. 1.

"What happened is the chairman of our company passed away, and the the employees and staff had a collection in order to sponsor Foundry in a Box in local schools," said David Weiss, vice president of engineering and research and development at Eck Industries. "Robert Eck was our chairman, and he would have wanted that to be done. We thought we would do something to honor him for all his years in the foundry industry."

Students used casting kits to create their own tin castings by pressing an oil-based molding sand into a small match-plate mold, melting tin in a microwave oven, and pouring the molten metal into the mold.

"When you have a positive on the plate and pack sand around it, you take the pattern out and you have a negative in the sand," Fleischmann explained to the students. "Basically the pattern creates the pattern in the sand. We fill that space with liquid metal."

Students created tin starfish, arrowheads, and lizards using the molds.

Sparking an interest

The goal of Foundry in a Box is to educate students on the metal casting industry and instill an interest in metal casting careers.

"A lot of people are not familiar with metal casting. This region has a lot of metal casting jobs. We are looking for employees," Weiss said. "We want to make people aware of what the possibilities are in metal casting and familiarize people with manufacturing."

There are slightly less than 2,000 metal casting businesses in the United States, according to Leo Baran, the American Foundry Society director of membership services. Many are small, privately owned companies like Eck Industries, which employs 225 — and the industry is facing a shortage of skilled workers.

"The metal casting industry has gone through some hard times in this country," Weiss said. "It is coming back in a big way. We're looking for more and more employees to do all the jobs."

By Phillip Bock: (920) 686-2966, pbock@htrnews.com, or @bockling on Twitter