Alpha Foundry Company owners launch new company

^{Pictured left to right: Ryan Barron and Emerson Barron with their new ShotShower™ machine.}

NFFS member foundry Alpha Foundry Company, a 103-year-old aluminum and zinc foundry located in Wright City, Missouri, has announced the launch of a new company called HoT Ideas LLC. Founded by Emerson and Ryan Barron, the father and son owners of Alpha Foundry , the company provides an innovative new automation solution to depowder 3-D printed cores in the foundry.

From their website at www.hotideasllc.com:

“As 3D printing for molds has become a regular mainstay for the foundry industry, so has the growing need to solve equipment and production problems, develop new ways to streamline labor involved and reduce cost of production. Their goal with any invention is to help foundries save time, money, labor, and increase profitability."

"Their most recent development – The ShotShower™ is just one example of their work. ShotShower™ is an easy, simple and effective way to depowder 3-D printed cores in the foundry. Removing the entrained sand from a 3-D printed core, or “depowdering,” is a major bottleneck in core production. Traditionally it’s a manual process involving soft brushes and air guns to remove the unwanted sand to produce an acceptable core. Manual depowdering raises many issues from operator skill, cycle time/throughput, quality and scrap. Automating the depowdering process can help deliver benefits not possible with a fully manual approach."

"Utilizing automation, like ShotShower™, can address the aforementioned issues. It's gentle "shower" of fine shot efficiently removes sand from large areas in a single pass for faster throughput. The shot's impact pressure in the depowdering process is easily adjusted by the distance the core is held from the shot dispensing chute with technique readily mastered by the operator in a fast, intuitive learning curve."

Learn more about HoT Ideas LLC and ShotShower™ at hotideasllc.com.