The Pattern Shop: Where Your Aluminum Products Start to Take Shape
Have you experienced inefficient or low-quality aluminum casting? This often starts at the mold pattern, where your product’s plans take shape. Whether you have current tooling or need to have tooling crafted for your project, our Pattern Shop is here to help. The in-house Pattern Shop at Boose Aluminum Foundry is staffed with experienced patternmakers who rig and gate both newly constructed tooling from our affiliated pattern shops and existing customer-supplied tooling.
Pattern making is an art and a trade that goes beyond simply plugging in your design. The full breadth of the aluminum casting process starts right here in our pattern shop! If you’re excited to see your product in the hands of industry leaders like us, then call today!
Receive Quality Design and Planning Through Technology
Even with an expert in charge, having a single set of eyes planning your casting work is not enough. Your equipment could have thin walls, air pockets, or other defects without multiple perspectives. This is why our Pattern Shop works first-hand with our Product Development Department to ensure that each pattern is built not only within the specifications of the drawing measurements but also to ensure castability.
CAD Capabilities
Computer Assisted Design (CAD) is the most helpful technology available for production and industry today, allowing your designers to share exact specifications with our team. We can give these designs a critical eye to the casting process, ensuring minimal casting difficulty.
Liquid Metal Prediction
Our Product Development Team uses solidification software to predict how molten metal will flow within the mold we design, allowing us to re-tool as needed without wasting time or aluminum on failed products. This ensures maximum efficiency throughout the casting process.
CNC Drafting
For high-detail molds that have exacting needs on dimension, we work with teams that use Computer Numerical Control manufacturing to create mold positives. This process ensures there is no size or shape error for products with little to no room for error.
Though we have over a hundred years behind us in production, that doesn’t mean we are stuck in the past. We work hard to stay up-to-date with the latest and most exciting updates to the aluminum casting process!
What Happens in the Pattern Shop at Boose Aluminum?
After our product development department supplies the pattern shop with design specs, our in-house pattern makers build the gate paths through which molten metal will flow and mount them to the pattern. This is known as the gating system, which is critical to efficient metal casting. Our 20 X 24 Hunter Automatic Casting equipment uses flasks of green sand, which requires this invaluable prep work.
Our pattern shop services all customer tooling for both our molding and core departments. This allows flexibility for timely adjustments, changes to letters and numbers, and minor repairs that may arise during production. Our pattern shop personnel are also responsible for the safe storage and exact identification of all tooling housed at our foundry.
The Patterns You Get From Boose Aluminum Foundry Matter
The aluminum parts you get here are used throughout dozens of industries and are often relied upon for productivity, safety, and health. A failing When it comes to creating the highest-quality castings, precision is essential. In order to achieve that accuracy, we have developed long-term working relationships with many excellent outside pattern shops that have access to CNC machines, 3D modeling, and other pattern-making resources.
The attention to detail employed by our pattern shop—and the ones we work with—results in aluminum castings that exceed all expectations. Because at our aluminum foundry, what we cast matters.
