Current Situation of Cast Iron and Steel Foundries, workshops, factories in China

I have worked in iron foundries in China for many years, and herein, want to talk about the current situation about these foundries. Hope these information could be helpful to the metal casting purchasers overseas.

As for iron foundries, they usually produce gray iron castings and ductile iron castings. Most of the iron foundries in China use the traditional green sand as the molding material, and some can use the resin sand as the molding materials. Many small iron foundries have dozens of cast workers, and mainly produce some simple gray iron and ductile iron castings with low machining requirements or without machining. Some larger iron foundries use the molding machines or automatic molding lines. More and more iron foundries are using automatic molding lines, but they usually produce the auto parts for the manufactures of auto vehicles in China. Only very few of large iron foundries could produce the auto parts for overseas.

In addition, most of iron foundries in China could produce the gray iron class 15 to class 25 and ductile iron class 40, 45 and 50, and few of foundries could produce the gray iron class 30 and ductile iron class 60 or 70 in China.

As for the steel foundries, there are some not too many small steel foundries in China by using the water glass sand as the molding material, but this casting process can produce middle size steel castings and alloy steel castings. There are many investment casting workshops in China, they usually produce small investment castings mainly by water glass and lost wax process, and some steel foundries can use the silica to replace the water glass. However, in recent years, most of investment casting workshops have been closed because of the U.S. dollar devaluation and pollution control in China. In the following years, the small and middle steel foundries will be difficult to survive.

Some special iron foundries specifically produce the pipe fittings and drying cylinders, these foundries are usually large and their products are simplex. They usually do not produce other iron castings.

I think China foundries are improving their casting and machining equipments very fast, but their technical level is improving slowly. China is really lacking the casting engineers and skilled workers, and this situation will become more serious in the future.

Therefore, as a purchaser, you should find a suitable iron foundry for your products. You can check their website to see if they have produced the similar iron and steel castings before, or check their quotations to see if they have understood your drawings and requirements very well. Price is very important but it should not be taken as the yard of qualified supplier.

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