Engineering group offers versatile foundry service

UK group has a ferrous and non-ferrous foundry that offers design, pattern-making and prototyping facilities for small batch work in irons, aluminium alloys, bronzes and gunmetal, writes Mike Page.

UK general engineering group has a number of companies that provide engineering services, including pattern making and castings, automotive components, sheet metal working machinery, metrology and tooling, and a range of architectural and street furniture.

Ashford, Kent, UK, may well be known to users of the Eurostar high-speed railroad services that occasionally call there - or mostly pass it by.

The town originally had an extensive railroad locomotive and rolling stock plant.

Its presence from the mid-19th Century encouraged the growth of support subcontracting industries like foundries and machine shops.

The railroad works closed in the 1960s, followed by some of its subcontractors - except M J Allen.

Invited last week to view the addition of M J Allen's first volume production work (see separate story under Heller Machine Tools), Manufacturingtalk and other journalists, were given a tour of the Ashford site.

From a pattern-making service set up in 1957 by Mike Allen, a non-ferrous (NF) foundry, M J Allen (Non-Ferrous Founders) was registered in 1964.

The foundry produces 'one-off' to small batches of precision castings up to 800kg (1760 lb) in aluminium and alloys and up to 200kg (440 lb) for copper-based castings.

The latter include phosphor and aluminium bronzes and gunmetal.

M J Allen uses the latest sand moulding techniques and gravity die processes to give the highest integrity and produced to 'near-net-shape'.

Gravity sand cast aluminium alloy jobs can be cast typically within 0.4mm (1/64in).

Foundry activities were expanded in 1968, when the group set up M J Allen (Iron Founders), which uses oil-fired Monometer furnace to produce high quality medium and heavy grey Iron castings to BS EN 1561 EN-GJL grades 150-300 up to 2 tonnes.

The iron foundry's 2.5 tonne capacity furnace is a novel rotary design fired on ecological reclaimed oil.

In the foundry too is a 370kg (800 lb) capacity, medium frequency electric furnace that produces BS EN 1563 EN-GJS grades of SG (spheroidal graphite) iron castings up to 250kg (550 lb).

The company is examining the feasibility of producing SG iron in the rotary furnace.

The interest would be in casting larger SG pieces, say for diesel engines or gearboxes.

* Pattern making - M J Allen's pattern makers are highly skilled and produce patterns in woods, resins or metals.

Terry Nye, production manager from the M J Allen (ENC) machine shop, explained that prototype patterns are produced in soft woods.

Production patterns are made in resins or metals, derived from the prototype patterns.

The foundry uses air set resin sand to ensure the highest quality castings in soundness, dimensional accuracy and surface finish.

During Manufacturingtalk's visit, the iron foundry was producing heavy grey iron, gearboxes, up to 1 tonne.

These were being cast in two different sizes to be later machined and delivered to animal foodstuff pellet mill manufacturer in The Netherlands.

M J Allen has also produced and machined components for MAN Diesels; including its RK280 (28/33) high speed diesel engine and the MAN Panxman VP185 series, 18-cylinder diesel engine.

Items include air manifolds, sumps and turbo charger boxes.

Other castings produced by M J Allen have included yokes and plinths for naval weapons systems and transmission cases for New Holland high clearance tractor systems.

Very impressive were the elegant LM 25 aluminium alloy 'C' frame structures.

I saw a 240kg (530lb) aluminium casting for radiotherapy machines.

The finish, as one was removed from a moulding box, was extraordinary, the casting requiring minimal fettling after riser/gate sprues had been removed.

In the foundry too, engineers were setting up the company's first production gravity die casting machine to produce a the Ford Transit All-Wheel-Drive transmission system.

The transmission had been developed by M J Allen Group company, Countytrac, acquired in 2000 (see separate story under Heller Machine Tools).

The ferrous and NF foundries use air-set resin sands, of which some 80% is recycled.

The foundries share chemical and mechanical analysis, dye penetrant, X-ray and ultrasonic inspection and pressure testing facilities.

M J Allen's Hilger spectrometer, for example, carries out melt analyses - and recommends alloy additions - within 5min.

For the foundry, that is ample time, as melts - depending upon specification - can be held for up to 20-25min.

* CNC machining - M J Allen (ENC) was established on the foundry site to provide full rough and finish machining capacity, accepting large components up to 2 tonnes as well as machining the smaller jobs.

For example, the pelletising machinery gearboxes are machined in a twin-pallet Shibaura Toshiba BMC 100 horizontal machining centre.

A companion twin-pallet Toshiba machine was seen machining the MAN RK280, 500kg aluminium diesel engine head.

This casting has a complex end chamber and pressure tests have to be carried out for oil, air and gas.

The machine shop also operates various vertical machining centres, CNC lathes and mill-turn centres backed by comprehensive CMM facilities.

The latest CMM added is a DEA Sirocco.SP, initially for checking the smaller Ford transmission casing components.

On view too was the recent Heller Machine Tools MCi 16 horizontal machining centre cell introduced for the machining of the Ford Transit All-Wheel-Drive transmission system transmission casing components (see separate story under Heller Machine Tools).

* Volume production - the Ford job is M J Allen's first volume production work - though small volume by automotive industry standards.

There are four components to be cast and machined per transmission, Initial call is for 1350 transmissions/year, expected to rise quickly to 5000+/year.

In some ways, it may not be entirely true to say it is M J Allen's first volume production job, when one looks at the Mather and Smith decorative cast iron railings, bollards and street furniture produced by the iron foundry.

As for the future, M J Allen Group managing director and son of the founder, Tim Allen, said that the company had grown on the basis of gaining work from individual group companies and partly by company acquisition.

The acquisition of the Countryac vehicle design and engineering company is a prime example.

Development work there brought work to the group's foundry and machining divisions as well as assembly work.

For example, concerning the story of the Ford Transit All-Wheel-Drive transmission system, it was Countryac's Eric May who persuaded Ford that the transmission design would enhance Ford Transit vehicles' traction.

It would provide, say ambulances, with an all-gear/all wheel drive when it was needed - say when crossing a muddy football pitch to reach a seriously injured player.

Allen said; "We told Ford to put money in to prove it (the Countryac all-wheel transmission) works.

Note that M J Allen group had already invested some GBP 500,000 in in-house development work.

Explaining the strategy, Allen said: "We had looked for products to suit our skills set in the foundry.

We wanted to dilute the sub-contract work by adding products.

Impressed by the Countryac's performance, a reciprocal licensing arrangement was set up with Ford and it includes joint product work.

"Ford may put the (Countryac) transmission onto other platforms.

Said Allen.

To-date, 60 vehicles have been equipped with the Countryac transmission - including 50 ambulances in Turkey.

Getrag in Halewood, UK assembles the transmissions.

It did beg the question though of why would a country like Turkey not be interested in doing the casting and machining? "The job did go out to tender," answered Allen, "But volumes were too low and the Turks were not interested.

As for other interested companies, the very complex main case casting (which requires complex machining) produced either no quotes or quotes that were too high.

Allen added that even if demand reaches 5000/year it is still too low for many Tier 1/2 automotive suppliers: "But it will be getting near to the 'risk' level," as far as keeping the work was concerned.

As for the future in the automotive design/development/low volume production area, Allen talked about the 'next generation' of transit vehicles - say 'electrical drives' or power take-off, or applying the Countryac transmission to other vehicle platforms, including defence vehicles.

The existing one fits into the existing Ford transit platform without any platform modifications.

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