Watry Industries LLC, a large permanent mold aluminum foundry located in Sheboygan, QI, takes pride in working closely with its customers to co-develop and optimize casting design. In addition to offering casting design assistance and permanent mold casting production in its 172,000ft2 facility, Watry also performs heat-treating, precision machining, powder coating and assembly operations in-house.
Some of Watry’s largest customers design and build various medical devices, typically structural components of patient care equipment such as anesthesia machines, ventilators, EKG carts, and other applications. One casting, the base of an anesthesia machine, houses the caster wheels and supports the weight of the unit, including large gas cylinders for certain applications, and, as such, must support substantial mechanical loads, while also meeting tough cosmetic requirements required of top-end medical equipment. Watry worked closely with its customer to assist in the design process for this part, as well as two other castings used on the same program, from concept through tooling and into production.
Considered for making the part were several other production processes, including injection molded plastic, structural foam, plastic cowling over steel fabrication, and several casting processes including sand cast, permanent mold and high pressure die cast. After investigation, mechanical strength concerns eliminated some of the plastic construction methods and a thorough cost analysis eliminated the fabrication options as being too expensive. Aluminum castings had a proven record of accomplishment in similar applications, and a cost analysis compared the various cast processes. Based on the combination of part cost and tooling cost (total cost of ownership) the result of all these studies was that permanent mold was the best process for the application.
Subsequently, Watry’s engineers participated in technical reviews of the part with their customers’ engineering group, and used Magmasoft solidification modeling software to analyze part and gating design as well as determine optimum process parameters. Magmasoft analysis led to some design changes for incorporation into the part before mold build. The result of these joint engineering efforts was that Watry produced suitable castings, which were heat-treated, machined and powder coated in-house. Watry is currently tooling a similar but larger part, using the lessons learned on this program to ensure cost-effective production of the follow-up program.
To view a video about the Watry powder coating operation, please click here.