Traditional Foundry and Engineering.

Some would call traditional skills “Old School” and possibly say, well that’s just out of date. But don’t be fooled by that remark, because a huge quantity of car parts were once produced by the “old school” technique and engineering processes, it is still very much in practice today in many countries across the globe.

The writer has been involved with metal casting and foundry work since the mid 1980’s, the journey has been a challenge and highly rewarding in many ways with the successes that have been achieved.

So what we decided to do is to show you what we do in our own workshop to manufacture small Lotus car parts in cast aluminium, some of which require machining to finish and complete, and others don’t. The parts we show here are moulded in green sand, then molten metal is poured into the mould in the foundry, and later removed from the sand mould, then machined on the lathe and or milling machine, and we end up with a high quality reproduction part to complete a restoration or minor rebuild.

Given the required skills, the complete traditional engineering process can be implemented in almost any automotive workshop…. even the DIY workshop, foundry shop skills can help to elevate your automotive achievements and projects to another level, but of course, the process does take time to learn and master, and it wont be everyone’s cup of tea, but what is amazing is to see peoples face light up when you tell them; “I made that part”.

The above video is a quick over view of the foundry process, there are a couple of steps not included simply due to the fact of being a solo operator… and being limited to one task at a time. The shot above shows the gas fired furnace with lid open, the internal furnace temperature would be around 750 to 800deg C.

Hopefully there are a couple of takeaways here for you.