One comment from a foreman in Pittsburgh made me stop ignoring slag buildup on my molds

I was running a job back in July, pouring ductile iron on a big batch of valve bodies. Foreman walked by, looked at my cope and drag, and just said 'you're gonna have porosity on every third casting if you don't clean that ledge.' I thought he was being dramatic. First inspection came back, three out of four had gas holes. Took me a full day to grind out and weld fill them. Now I scrape the parting line with a hook tool after every pull, adds maybe 30 seconds per mold but zero rejects since. Has anyone else had a supervisor call out something small that saved you a ton of rework?

3 comments

3 Comments

angela_grant17d ago

That foreman in Pittsburgh saved you from a headache, but Nancy's right that old guys aren't always correct. I had a thirty-year veteran tell me to run my iron hotter to avoid slag, and it just made the gas worse on every single pour. Blindly trusting seniority over your own eyes will cost you just as many weekends as ignoring them.

nancy47520d ago

Oh yeah, I had a foreman once tell me my gating system looked like a kid drew it with crayons. He was right though, every pour was choked and we got cold shuts like crazy. Took me two days to rework a batch of pump housings, all because I was too stubborn to listen. Now I treat every little comment from those old guys like gold, even when it stings. Half the time they're just saving you from grinding your weekend away.

patriciareed20d ago

Old guys are wrong plenty of times too, @nancy475. I had a veteran tell me my riser design was gonna starve the part and insisted I go with his plan. Followed his advice and ended up with a massive shrink cavity in a batch of valve bodies had to scrap the whole run. Turns out his method was outdated for that alloy. Sometimes that old school confidence is just them repeating stuff they heard forty years ago without checking if it still works.