trailer world issue One 2008

Technology Issue One 2008 31 Cast all in one Quality management and voluntary certiﬁcation: The Busch foundry in the Sauerland wants to be always one step ahead. Like water it ﬂows into the casting ladle, but it is seven times as heavy as water: hot, molten iron at 1,500 degrees Celsius. It glows with a glaring orange. When a few drops become detached they solidify in an instant to a hard black substance. The heat hits you in the face. When the ladle is emp- tied into a mould, the molten metal is cast to make the parts which will later leave Busch from its two plants – as slugs from the foun- dry in Meschede-Wehrstapel, or machined ready to ﬁt from Bestwig: brake discs and brake drums, and ﬂywheels for diesel en- gines, exclusively for the commercial vehi- cle industry. About 20 lorries a day leave the factory site; the company produced 2.5 mil- lion castings last year. They weighed 115,000 tonnes in total. Precisely cast, from high- quality materials. At Busch they place great importance on quality. The company from the Sauerland prima- rily supplies all the commercial vehicle man- ufacturers in Europe, as well as other axle manufacturers. “All our customers demand the highest standards in terms of consistent quality,” says Wolfgang Krappe, CEO of the Busch foundry. “And we want to be the best.” A comprehensive quality management sys- tem, voluntary certiﬁcation and well-trained technicians ensure that this is demonstrated again and again by every single product. Busch operates at two locations: in the foundry in Wehrstapel, and in the machin- ing plant four kilometres away in Bestwig, wherethecastmaterialsaremachined–turn- ed, drilled and milled. Up to 28 tonnes of iron can be cast eve- ry hour. The raw materials themselves are carefully chosen: Busch buys only selected, continuously monitored scrap from press- ing shops and forges. An entire car from the crusher,includingplasticcomponents,would not end up in the casting ladle at Busch. The iron becomes molten at over 1,500 degrees. It is still at 1,400 degrees when it is poured into the moulds. A sample is taken from the molten mass every 15 minutes to check the purity of the material. It is poured to form a small round disc, polished and then analysed under a spectrometer. The material is vaporised in an arc on the sur- face. The measuring device detects from the colours of the spectrum exactly what is in the sample. The ﬁgures are compared with the standard ﬁgures. It would be immedi- ately obvious if the material did not comply with the requirements – and then the whole batch would be rejected. And in that context the Busch foundry voluntarily sets the ﬁg- ures accurate to a hundredth of a percentage point, whereas the customers’ requirements relate only to a matter of tenths. Measure- ments at this level of accuracy enable con- tinuously reproducible analysis – and if re- quired the customer gets a works certiﬁcate with all the data. Every batch is recorded, Continuous analysis Wolfgang Krappe (left), CEO at Busch, has high quality standards. “We want to be the best.” Photos:Golz

trailer world issue One 2008

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