Foundry & Forge

FOUNDRY

McWade controls the manufacturing process from foundry to assembly and relies on its integrated foundry to produce a wide range of proprietary products.

Integral Operation

McWade relies on its foundry to manufacture a wide range of proprietary products. This essential operation supplies the castings necessary to construct these products, ensuring the lowest cost and highest quality and consistency.

McWade Aluminium Sand Foundry Area
McWade Foundry Pouring Aluminium
McWade 3D printer
McWade 3D printer

3D Printing

Metal casting, an age-old manufacturing method, now benefits from 3D printing by reducing tooling costs, like moulds and cores.  Our 3D printer let’s us make cost-effective, one-off prototypes, reducing expenses linked to traditional mould-making methods.  This shift helps foundries like ours stay competitive as 3D printing is integrated into our production processes.

FORGING

A few years ago, the acquisition of Babcock Ntuthuko Powerlines, now known as McWade Powerlines, added a crucial forging facility, completing the tools required for McWade’s end-to-end production process.

Capacity & Equipment

Forging press
Installed capacity is up to 120 tons per month of forged components for both power line hardware and third-party requirements in the mining, railway, automotive, marine and forestry sectors.

Production equipment in the forge includes:

  • Four banning pneumatic hammers with forces of 2000, 3500, 4000 and 6000 kg/m, including induction heating furnaces and trimming presses
  • One 250 ton horizontal forging machine, induction and gas fired heating furnaces
  • Two shot blasting machines and fully automatic cold saws
  • A high volume billet cropper
  • Two bench type MPI machines for crack detection
  • Numerous eccentric and fly presses used for coining or manufacturing of forged bolts, nuts, U-bolts and other components
  • Various metal finishing and deburring machines and
  • Three 620 CFM screw compressors with receivers
Good quality forgings in shot blasted condition

Tool Room

The company has a toolroom and machining facility that includes:

  • A Haas VF3 CNC with a table load of up to 1 500kg
  • Two rigid copy milling machines
  • Two AgieCharmilles spark erosion machines
  • Five milling machines
  • Two surface grinders
  • One cylindrical grinding machine, four lathes
  • One precision drill
  • A cold saw
  • A Pantograph milling machine
  • A metallurgical laboratory with routine hardness and
    tensile testing equipment and five heat treatment furnaces

Diversification and Expansion