Robert Barnard wrote:

The reality today is our EPA rules force us to go outside the States for
"exotic" foundry work (it's only exotic because we make it exotic).  Unless
you can get a union (and a large constituency) to match the "other left"
(and help out as in the case of steel plants), your SOL.

About 10 or 12 years ago I met some people (from the UK) at the IMTS who do
sand and die castings with magnesium.  Most of the items on display were
motorsport related.  Examples included a motorcycle wheel and Corvette
engine block they did with GM and Dow (Dow had to formulate a special
coolant that would not react with magnesium).

They pointed out a lot of advantages of magnesium in a power plant or drive
train.  Magnesium is a dampener, which can help reduce resonance.  Also
conventional threads are problematic since the metal is "sticky", and the
threads eventually pull.  Adding helicoils was one solution.  But they said
the heads of the engine were held on with what resemble large sheet metal
screws.  That the screws cut their own threads and hold the aluminum heads
on the block.  They also added that the only problem with the power plant
was the heads warped (should have used magnesium).

I checked to see if I could find them on the net (don't remember their
name).  But I did find a few companies in the UK and India that do sand
castings.

I wonder how the Cosworth foundry method would work with magnesium?

There were a few listings for Israeli foundries.  At one time they were
working on a magnesium extraction process to be used on the Dead Sea.  They
claimed once the process was working, the price could be competitive with
aluminum.  But I wonder how expensive the tooling would be.

The last link listed below is of an Indian company.  I've worked with a few
India companies doing CAE/CAD.  It seems culturally, these folks do an
incredible amount of work for very little money, and follow instructions to
the letter.  In one case we had to send part databases (CAD) back and ask
them to reduce the amount of detail (it was taking too much time to bring the
assemblies up on the Sun Sparc workstations).  The "errors they made" were
to follow our specifications too closely, we were vague in some of our
specs.  Example:  The screw heads on the relays they modeled for a CAD
library were even filleted.  At least they didn't model the threads!

Here are the links:
www.uk-racing-castings.co.uk
www.australianfoundries.com/magtech
http://business.vsnl.com/shreyas19

Rob Barnard

Sounds like I should gather up my drawings and jump on a plane for India.

Paul Lamar
 
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