Green sand and aluminium have a long and successful partnership in the USA, particularly at Boose Foundries. In fact, the Boose family has been sand casting aluminium since 1933.  In 2006, Boose acquired the Cornwall Aluminium Foundry in Lebanon, Pennsylvania and completely upgraded its manufacturing processes shortly after switching to Boose Quality Castings in 2019. Joe, LeAnn and Brandon Boose took full ownership of the reins in 2019 and the facility now operates as BQC Foundry, marking the many positive changes in equipment, structure and personnel with a proud new name. 

Moving to DISA quality 

BQC operates three molding lines, all fed by a single 100B Speedmullor that can mix up to 100 tons of sand every hour. The castings are all gravity poured, mostly by hand but sometimes by a robot.  

In its quest to produce the highest quality aluminium castings, Boose decided to replace its existing molding lines with new machines. The shortlist of vendors was very short indeed.  

“I wanted to have the best green sand foundry on the US East Coast and, if possible, in the entire US,” says Brandon Boose, VP of Operations at BQC. “I figured the best starting point for that was to have the best molding machines. DISA has been the leader in foundry molding machines for decades and, in addition to simply wanting their machines, I have just always been a fan of DISA.”

MATCH satisfies high expectations 

In 2021, the company installed its first new machine, the world’s first ever DISA MATCH 16/20 machine. The DISA MATCH 16/20 runs at speeds of up to 180 unicored  molds per hour with pattern changes of only two or three minutes– perfect for foundries like BQC that mix short, medium, and long runs. Its matchplate adaptor means it can re-use existing jolt-squeeze pattern plates or patterns from other vendors’ matchplate machines with minimal modification – making upgrades easy and cost effective. 

Today, after two years of operation, MATCH’s high-quality molds have significantly improved Boose’s ability to profitably produce aluminium castings with high dimensional accuracy and excellent surface finish. 

“We were consistently seeing weekly scrap rates of 4-5% on jobs running on the old machines,” says Brandon. “That same product mix when switched over to the DISA machine runs with less than 2% scrap on average per week, so our scrap rates are a fraction of what they were before the DISA MATCH installation, which is truly incredible. It’s even more impressive that it’s doing this while producing up to 187 molds per hour.” 

BQC: A laser-like focus on quality 

BQC can now easily make hard, accurate molds – even with deep pockets – that produce an excellent surface finish in the final casting, typically around 300-325RMS(AA-CS-E18-92). However, we have noticed that products with releases or very tall risers can get close to the 250RMS.    

“High quality molds with minimal mismatch means our castings have a very thin parting line,” says Brandon. “There’s far less fettling and grinding required to meet our customers’ surface finish requirements, which has reduced our labor costs significantly.” 

“With the old equipment, we had to put sand in the cope wherever there were pockets,” continues Brandon. “With the DISA, we just blow the mold. It’s impressive with the intricate pattern designs that we used to struggle with, it’s got a lot easier for us now.” 

BQC has worked with DISA’s Application Team experts to achieve the best quality, yield, and productivity for a wide range of castings, from flat, simple, unicored parts to complex, multi-cored castings. Just like DISA Application, BQC uses sophisticated in-house MAGMASOFT simulation software to design new tooling and optimize its process. 

The foundry’s dedicated team keeps a close eye on sand properties and multiple other quality-related investments have been made in melting, melt hydrogen level testing and mold handling.

Fast, flexible, high quality and more sustainable: what’s not to like? 

Green sand’s pattern lifetime and cost is another big advantage that BQC has over its die casting competitors. Green sand molds are over 90% cheaper compared to permanent molds and each plate lasts around six times longer. DISA has recorded that a low-alloy-steel MATCH plate can create up to 500,000 green sand molds, so our target of 100,000 still puts us ahead of the permanent mold made from the same material that typically only lasts for 70,000 gravity die casting shots.  

“We primarily use DISA’s recommended tooling life,” says Paul Snyder, Quality and Engineering Manager at BQC. “Our most heavily used tooling has so far made 20,000 molds with no detectable tooling wear when inspected.” 

The ease and speed of creating – and altering – green sand tooling has also enhanced BQC’s prototyping workflow. Added to that is MATCH’s low manpower requirements, high productivity and uptime, plus incredible reliability, and low maintenance from its simple, robust design. 

Sustainability also benefits, with low scrap rates reducing energy consumption. The green diamond (non-silica) base sand has no chemical resins added and BQC can immediately re-use around 98% of its molding sand. It currently sends its used shell core sand off for reclamation. 

Winning even more business 

Customers have recognized MATCH’s cost and quality strength, too, improving BQC’s competitiveness in the US market. The company receives a growing number of RFQs for previously die-cast components to be produced in green sand. 

“We’ve now successfully helped customers switch quite a few products from die casting to green sand with MATCH,” says Paul. “Bringing in the DISA technology has really opened up our playbook when it comes to quoting and engineering – how can we make this product cheaper and faster? From an engineering perspective, being able to make consistent molds and knowing how the sand filling makes our job a lot easier when we’re planning and quoting for a new product.” 

"We can now bid on jobs we’ve never been able to bid on before, typically jobs that would go to die casting right away,” explains Brandon. “We can really compete with permanent molds or die cast, even for extremely challenging products with deep pockets and complex geometries. Since we can do the higher volumes at the same time, we’re able to keep the costs down for customers.”

Building a winning partnership 

With this performance, it is no surprise that BQC’s second DISA MATCH line was ready to start operating by October 2023. This time, it’s the larger format DISA MATCH 20/24!

For Information: 

DISA Industries Inc.

1606 Executive Drive

30240 LaGrange, Georgia, USA

Tel. +1.630.820 3000

E-mail: disasales@disagroup.com

www.disagroup.com