New Molding Line Brings Increased Capabilities to Farrar
Growth is essential at Farrar Corporation.
Capital investments into our facilities are a priority for us and have helped us develop into a lead supplier of ductile iron castings.
Our vision statement, “striving to be a company that provides the highest quality products, services and turnkey solutions,” speaks to this commitment. Without continuous advancement, we would fail to live up to this promise.
That’s why as technology has evolved, so do we. The equipment in our pattern shop, machine shops, and foundry needs to keep pace with the ever-changing technology and machinery that exist in our industry.
“In the metal casting and machining industries, you either reinvest or eventually get left behind,” said Gregg Farrar, VP/Chief Financial Officer of Farrar. “It is vitally important for us to invest in capital improvements at Farrar Corporation to meet the growth goals we have as well as to take advantage of the ever-changing technology improvements. The increased capacity and leveraging of the latest technology will allow us to continue to meet and exceed our customer’s needs.”
This spring, we took another leap forward with the installation of a state-of-the-art FBO-IIIS 20 x 24 molding line from Roberts Sinto at our ductile iron sand casting foundry in Norwich, Kansas.
It will increase our capacity as well as help us be more efficient and more cost-effective, all while keeping our high standards of quality.
The addition of the molding line comes as part of an effort to produce castings with tighter tolerance, tighter process controls and continual improved quality.
Robert Pyle, who is the Plant Manager at our Norwich facility, is looking forward to the effects this new investment will have on production.
“It opens up more capacity to help reduce lead times,” said Pyle. “The new line blows vertically which reduces the wear and tear on customer tooling. It will allow us to pull pockets and contours that we were not capable of doing before without adding cores which will reduce costs.”
The 20 x 24 Roberts Sinto replaces the older 14 x 19 model, giving our foundry more capability as it can run 110 molds per hour and is equipped with 186 cooling positions.
Our foundry currently has two other FBN Roberts Sinto machines, with the new installation bringing us to three production lines to produce 20” x 24” molds.
The increased capacity will help us provide better service to our current customers and grow our foundry to welcome new customers.
This development comes on the heels of recent capital investments including two new 2500KW Inductotherm coreless induction furnaces that were installed in 2020 and two DMG-Mori NTX 5-axis CNC machining centers that were added last year. We also replaced the General Kinematics (GK) Vibradrum with a GK media drum.
“We are excited to add new equipment that allows us to be at the forefront of our industry in producing the very best quality vertically integrated castings,” said Pyle.
These growth opportunities were necessary as we look to meet the needs of companies who are reshoring and looking to get their ductile iron castings domestically. Farrar looks forward to the instant advantages that the new molding line will bring and we are excited to see what the future holds.
