Made in America

I was running a job one day and was surprised to find that one of the three webs was cracked. The center hub is connected to the friction surface by three webs at 120 degrees. I filled out an NCR for it and finished the job. The next time I ran those castings, I again found some cracked castings. It happened again. All the casting were the same date code and so they were all in one batch, from the foundry. I complained to my supervisor that I thought that quality control should be inspecting the casting, so that I do not have to deal with this. They agreed. I asked what is going to happen if I have missed one? Turns out that I did miss one. It made its way to Poland. I have no way of knowing if we have lost a customer due to our poor quality control.

I heard that someone from the foundry, discovered that their technician had been hitting the part with a hammer, to break it away from the sprue/riser and gating. I thought that the problem was solved. Wrong. We received more casting on 2/1 and I found more cracked castings. Six months and the problem is still there. They even changed the radius and they still crack. How can we get these casting for 18 years without this problem and now they crack?
SDE

I think a good metallurgist could examine the castings.

Quite honestly manufacturing f ups happen all the time. I work in customer service for an equipment manufacturer. If we are not actively messing up a new model, it seems we have time to shoot ourselves in the foot. And once this hits the customer, it seems to take about 2 years to resolve the problem. Unfortunate, but thats how it is in my world.

I worked for a company like that. They finally took the service department out of Engineering and gave it to me. I didn't waste any time making changes in every area of the machines that were causing us problems. It ended up that the changes I made not only fixed the problems but made the machines safer at a lower cost.

I used the farmer approach: Got a problem; find a solution to the problem and make it a better machine. Worked for me.

Same thing happening all over America. My dad is 74 still working as quality control. The plant manager goes to him when something goes wrong and asks him how to fix it. He is making $20 an hr they have engineers making six figures cad drawers making $30 an hr and the old man that started at the bottom has to fix the problem for the boys.By the By they are shutting down the plant and moving it to mexico. They asked him to inspect their boxes LOL when he told them how to fix problems they said they would do it their way.

In my experience much of the problem is due to just-in-time inventory and ordering only what you need for short term. The Japanese invented it and the automotive companies picked up on it so it caught on. The problem is that you need to keep real close tabs on your suppliers' quality and that takes a large QA staff which many employers don't want to do. What I ran into is with no extra inventory we had to use the bad parts each time it happened. How can you tell a supplier the parts are no good when you've been using them all along. They won't listen until you force them to eat a few orders. Just my feelings on the matter.

I don't know that the Japanese invented the ' just in time ' ordering Mike .
I think it was first developed by the English during WW2 , it saved months of stockpiled material being lost when manufacturing plants were bombed , this allowed production to start up fairly quickly at a new location .
Even so you are absolutely right about it mucking up the quality control of an industry's output .

QA guy told me today that they are adding a note to the job packets that the operator needs to inspect for cracks. the foundry did a 100% inspection and the QA guy checked a sample of 20. Oh well
SDE

Are they in such a hurry they are pulling them out of the mold too soon, cooling them too fast? Maybe leaving in the mold until cool would reduce the problem.

I make and sell aircraft grade castings for a living. It would be very helpful to know what alloy we are talking about here.

From the description you offer it sounds like an iron sand casting. There are different types of iron that have a wide variation in strength. More importantly are the ductility variations that give the ability to flex before failure.

The gating could be bad on the part causing shrinkage defects at the point of failure but it could also be a design issue that does not accommodate the stress loading correctly for the material chosen. I would suggest that you screen parts via penetrant inspection to see if they are cracked before you get them. If not, then material properties are suspect. Heat treatment and chemistry variations are the next in line.

Our company website will give you an idea what we do. And yes it's all made in America.
Shellcast, Inc Investment Castings