PUSHING AND PRODUCTIVITY

Located at Silverwater to the West of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia, Fidax is a small jobbing foundry producing a wide range of industrial castings. In recent years, however, the focus has shifted towards railway castings including fastners. Essential competitive parameters for Fidax are quality, price and yield. Fidax owns a DISAMATIC 2013 MK3 purchased in 1980.

Business has been quite active in Australia recently. The Fidax foundry has never been busier with 70 employees producing some 5,000 tonnes a year of grey iron and ductile iron castings using approximately 2,000 live patterns.”Basically, our relations with the DISA applications people have to do with constantly improving the way we make castings,” says Fidax foundry director, David Shwabsky. “As a smaller jobbing foundry we are constantly competing on price and quality. That means that our earnings depend on optimising our production yield. And when you remember that we work with as many as 2,000 live patterns, that’s an awful lot of variables to keep track of!”

Long-term training investment

Part of the deal when Fidax purchased their DISAMATIC 2013 MK3 back in 1980 was for two of their operators to attend a maintenance course at DISA in Denmark. “The reason we invested in this was simply because we wanted to be a self-sufficient as possible. Not only are we a relatively small jobbing foundry, but we also live on the other side of the world as far as DISA are concerned. So we wanted to minimise the risks from the start,” David Shwabsky explains. Fidax’ investment turned out to be very long term. “Both of those people are still with us”, says David Shwabsky, adding that contrary to their original fears, there never have been problems with getting assistance or spare parts from DISA. “The investment has certainly paid because we have managed everything ourselves. The impressive thing about DISA, though, is that they have always served us promptly and with the same attention and respect as anyone else (despite we being such a small operation). Spare parts have always been available when needed, and they even sent one of their most experienced applications engineers to visit us when we asked whether they could help us out with boosting productivity”.

Sand preparation and filling

“Sand preparation is a science in itself,” Davis Shwabsky explains, as he looks back at a recent four-day visit by a DISA applications specialist. “We were having some problems with mould strength and stability, and also of mould sand sticking to the patterns. The brief of DISA was not to come along with new ideas about what they could sell to us, but to find a solution based on our existing plant and equipment together with our pattern expert, metallurgist and sand operator”. This is precisely what DISA proceeded to do by recommending a new sand preparation parameters involving, for example, a different moisture content with improved mould compaction. Modifications to the sand filling process lead to improved shot pressure, shot time and squeeze pressure.

Pattern venting

These improvements did not resolve the problem of sand sticking to the patterns, however. “There we had to make some changes to the pattern plates,” David Shwabsky relates. “These involved redesigning the layouts and the feeding system, redesigning the pouring cups, implementing a proper venting system and also providing crush pins. All in all the changes recommended by DISA resulted in significant improvements in quality and yield”.

Boosting productivity

Achieving an overall productivity increase along the entire moulding line was meant doing more than introducing improvements at individual points along the line. The only way of realising the full potential of the moulding line was to install a new piece of equipment. “The trouble was that we were performing so well in the moulding process that the rest of the line was not able to keep up.” David Shwabsky relates. “We were using an older pneumatic mould conveyor, and while the DISA application engineer was well aware of our wish to get the most out of existing equipment as far as possible, not even he could think of a way of doing this. The answer was to replace the old mould conveyor with an automatic, hydraulic mould conveyor, which would synchronise and keep pace with the DISAMATIC 2013 MK3, no matter how high the moulding speed, and to introduce computerised process control. We decided to purchase the new conveyor and it will be installed at the end of 2003 when the line is closed down for the Christmas break”.

A business partner you can trust

“The reason why we chose DISA originally was because of their superior technology. But technology is not enough on its own. Our success depends on being able to invest in a solution that enables us to create as much value as possible for as long as possible. That solution consists partly of hardware in the form of a moulding line, and partly of software in the form of excellent service and prompt attention,” says David Shwabsky. “DISA have given us both and have thus contributed in no small way to the ongoing success of the Fidax foundry. DISA, excellently represented in Australia by Machinery Forum, is considered a vital component of our business”.

FIDAX Australia
DISA Industries A/S
Herlev Hovedgade 17
DK-2730 Herlev
Denmark