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Foundry Corporate News Topic Melting Shop Topic Pressure Die Casting

StrikoWestofen Group: US automaker leads move to efficient Aluminum melting

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StrikoWestofen Group has won a new large order to supply a large American automaker for their plant near to Mexico City (Mexico). For the joint project involving company subsidiaries in Germany, Poland, and the USA, the world’s market leader of energy efficient melting and dosing furnaces is supplying a total of three systems with full turnkey capability. These systems consist of “StrikoMelter” aluminum ingot melting furnaces with integrated heat recovery including all peripheral equipment. This large-scale project is scheduled to go into operation by spring 2013, and is StrikoWestofen’s first project for the US carmaker.

High fuel prices and the global trend towards low-emission vehicles means manufacturers are now demanding more efficient processes to maintain cost effectiveness in the North American market. The StrikoWestofen Group, based in Gummersbach (Germany), plays a key role in this expansion and is supplying three furnace systems for engine block and cylinder head casting. "The decision in favor of StrikoWestofen represents a technological paradigm shift: away from energy and resource intensive reverb furnace technology towards our state-of-the-art ‘EtaMax’ shaft furnace technology with integrated heat recuperation said Rudi Riedel, manager of the StrikoWestofen Group. “A further benefit is that, due to our presence in Michigan, we are ideally placed to react to the demands of the local markets with our know-how and production capacity.”

All from a single source

From December 2012 onwards, the StrikoWestofen Group is installing three fully equipped melting lines – consisting of StrikoMelter aluminum shaft melting furnaces and all the necessary peripheral equipment such as charging, holding, metal treatment and metal transfer – in Mexico. StrikoWestofen is responsible for planning and supplying the necessary melting furnaces, as well as for supervision of installation and commissioning.

"Our customer not only has faith in the quality and performance of our products but also relies to a high degree on our planning and installation expertise," explained Riedel. "During the bidding process we succeeded in almost halving the costs of the fully equipped melting line by completely restructuring the original line layout. The same applies to the space requirements on the production line. Our systems need only half the installation footprint against traditional technologies, which means further cost savings for the customer. In this context we benefitted greatly from the technical know-how of our US company StrikoDynarad Corp."

Convincing technology

The aluminum casting lines use melting furnaces of the StrikoMelter series which offer both a competitive capital investment and significantly reduced operating costs. The unique shaft geometry and specially adapted burner technology allows the preheating, heating and melting phases to be combined in a single melting shaft. In combination with its low melting chamber temperatures, the StrikoMelter achieves a metal yield of up to 99.7 percent, thus helping to sustainably reduce operating costs and casting costs per unit. For cylinder block casting, the experts chose a melting furnace of the StrikoMelter  HS-N series. This furnace will be manufactured in Michigan by StrikoDynarad and transported directly to its final location. In the second casting line two stationary StrikoMelter MH II-N furnaces will be in operation.

Company Info

StrikoWestofen GmbH

Carl-Zeiss-Str. 12
51674 Wiehl
Germany

Telephone: +49 2261 7091–0

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