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Established in 1983, Vanguard Foundry Ltd is a privately owned company specialising in the manufacture of Iron castings for the turbo-charging, diesel engine, agricultural & general engineering sector. Approved to ISO 9001-2000, we produce the entire Ductile Iron range including Simo, Ni-resist & ADI materials.
Please come and see various members of our staff at this prestigious exhibition. Vanguard will be sharing a stand with the Institute of Cast Metal Engineers and a number of other UK foundries. We would welcome the opportunity to meet any potential new customers and it is always a pleasure to see any of our existing customers that may be at the exhibition.
Following a recent request from a customer to produce turbine housings in Stainless Steel, Vanguard have successfully produced castings. The process of melting and casting Stainless Steel is significantly different from our normal Ductile Iron as the pouring temperature is very much higher. Shown below the first castings are being poured.
The castings in the photograph below are the first parts Vanguard has produced in Stainless Steel, they would normally be made in an Austenitic D5 material but as they have complicated cores and thin wall sections they were the most appropriate parts to try initially.
As can be seen from the photograph both the integrated manifold and turbine housing have produced excellent castings with very good surface finishes.
After working at Vanguard in a variety of roles for 9 years and in the foundry industry for 48 years Alan is retiring at the age of 67.
We wish Alan a very long and happy retirement and is pictured above receiving various presents presented by Martin Newby.
The Vanguard team consisting of Brian Higgins, Chris Mintern and Martin Newby beat the Darcast team by a single point after a nail biting final.
Shown above, the team are presented with the trophy by Eddie Lindsay, Branch President. The Bill Rooker trophy is presented to the team winning a general knowledge quiz held at one of the monthly ICME evenings. Vanguard was able to enter three teams, the other two of which finished well down the running order (but not last) and it confirms the outstanding achievement of Brian, Chris and Martin as our other two teams thought the questions were very hard.
Following five years of succession planning the board of directors is now complete. Chris Mintern has taken over from John Willetts as Managing Director, Dave Howell moves to Engineering Director, Pete Smith who has been with Vanguard since October 2009 became Technical and Quality Director in December 2010. And finally completing the board Martin Newby joined the company in May 2011 as Operation Manager, moving to Manufacturing Director in October 2011. All the members of the board have worked in foundries since leaving school and as such offer an unprecedented level of technical and practical experience for the benefit of our customers.
Pictured above from left to right Martin Newby, Chris Mintern, Dave Howell and Pete Smith.
Richard Bingham has now taken over responsibility of sales as Business Development Manager . Richard will be assisted by Jessica Read, who, as a native German now living in the UK will allow us to better communicate with our potential and existing German customers.
Shown above Richard and Jessica (Richard is on the right).
After 10 years at Vanguard, in the position of Managing Director John Willetts finally hung up his cow gown to start a well deserved retirement.
Shown above, John is receiving a carriage clock and various other ‘goodies’ from Chairman Brian Higgins. Brian commented that without John’s commitment over the last ten years Vanguard would not be in its present strong position. We wish John all the best for a long and happy retirement.
The first part of Vanguard’s major investment plan for 2011 is the installation of a new Laempe core machine. The very high production rates and ease of operation will allow the next phase of Vanguard’s investment plan to continue without running into a shortage of cores.
Pictured above Andy Leary proudly shows off the first core produced off the new machine.
Following will be the second and third stages of investment. The first of which will be the significant re-engineering of the HWS moulding line that will give a 30% higher production rate, these modifications will take place during the Easter shutdown. So then having got the cores and the moulds. The final stage will involve the installation of a second 750Kw melting power pack which will double our available melting capacity. The total investment will be approximately £500K and demonstrates Vanguard’s commitment to generate capacity to allow us to respond very quickly to any short lead time requirements our customers may have.