The problems with iron foundries in China

The iron foundries are also known as iron casting workshops, which manufacture iron and steel castings. Many overseas buyers and purchasers always try to find the suitable iron foundries in China, so they can buy good iron castings from them. However, they do not know there are many problems with those foundries.

As my years experiences in Dandong Ruiding Foundry, I sort the iron foundries in China to four types. The first type: Large foundries. These foundries own over three automatic molding lines, and can produce over 10000 tons iron castings per year. The second type: Middle foundries. These foundries own one or two automatic molding lines, and other casting processes, such as resin sand, manual green sand etc. The annual production is from 3000 tons to 10000 tons. The third type: Small foundries. These foundries do not have automatic molding lines, but have some molding machines or just manual green sand casting process. The fourth type: specific foundries. These foundries just produce one or two specific products. 

What are the problems with these foundries? 

As for the large foundries, since they have many auto molding lines, so their production efficiency is very high, and the casting quality is very good. The problems are they can not make large castings, or heavy castings because of the size limitation of the sand boxes. In addition, they can not make some castings with special dimensional or structures requirements. Moreover, they are not willing to accept small orders. Therefore, most of these foundries will only produce the automobile parts.  

As for the middle foundries, since they have automatic molding lines, and have other casting processes. They can meet many different demand. The problems are their technical abilities are limited, and their production costs are high. Why? These foundries were developed from traditional casting workshops, so they just start to use automatic molding line, therefore, their old engineers can not reach the new technical level. In one word, their old engineers did not know how to use the automatic molding lines. They are staying in the studying stage. At the same time, these foundries have to feed many engineers and administrative staff since they have many different workshops, and each workshop has different production processes. So, they production costs are higher than small foundries. According to the opinion of Mr. Galen Wang from Dandong Foundry, these foundries will develop into large foundries or small foundries in the future. The middle foundries are not a long-time stable stage. 

As for the small foundries, since they just have manual casting process, so they can do it very well. They can control their production and administrative costs very low, and their prices are very competitive. The problems with small foundries are their production efficiency is limited. Since all castings are made by hand. They have no ability to complete large orders. Moreover, their quality is not stable. Therefore, they can just accept small orders, and produce the iron castings with low requirements. 

As for the specific foundries, they only produce one or two types of castings. Such as some foundries only produce ductile iron pipes. Some just produce various pipe fittings. Some just produce very large castings, and some just produce stove parts. These foundries own the related equipments and rich experiences for their products, so they can make them very well. Their problems are they can not make other types of castings. Their engineers and workers are not willing to make other products because of higher defective rate and lower output.  

All in all, I believe these problems are not the exclusive in China. All foundries in the world will face the same problems. I wrote this article to advise the buyers and purchasers how to choose the suitable foundries in China. There are many good foundries in China, who are maximizing their strengths, and trying to avoiding their problems.  

Writer: Mr. Galen Wang from Dandong Ruiding Foundry.

For more articles, please check Dandong Foundry Blog.

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