ABOUT US

The Meteor Foundry Company was founded in Rexdale, Ontario in 1965. However, the need for more operating space eventually led to a search for a larger facility. The company moved to its present Mississauga location in 1981 to take advantage of the proximity to Toronto's Lester Pearson Airport. Its current building features 2,000 square feet of office space and a 25,000 square foot manufacturing area which houses sand and permanent mould foundries, and the finishing area. In 1989, the company added a 13,000 square foot heat treating facility, as well as machine and pattern shops.

Company founders Erwin Wittich and Erwin Gross brought the best elements of European foundry operations to their Canadian concern. While Gross is no longer with Meteor Foundry, the company carries on with a small, but efficient management team and a staff of about 50 full-time machinists, technicians, a metallurgy team and general laborers.

The current management consists of Mr. Wittich, sales manager Klaus Wallentin, general manager George Konzc, shipping manager and finishing supervisor Walter Schmitz, and foundry supervisor Balbir Dahwil. Marcus Wittich, the son of the original founder and president, serves as Meteor's administrative manager, keeping the family's tradition of foundry expertise fully alive.

In brief, Meteor Foundry specializes in aluminum and zinc castings, ranging in size from 100 grams to 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms). It also handles aluminum sand and permanent moulds castings. Company managers rely on repeat business and a reputation for quality to keep the foundry fires burning.

The younger Wittich pointed to a number of positive business practices that have left Meteor Foundry in a healthy financial situation in an industry characterized by small incremental growth, rather than exponential sales increases. He cited customer service, a reputation for quality and experienced managers as key ingredients in the company's formula for ongoing stability and success.

Wittich said Meteor's major customers include Husky Robotics of Bolton, Ontario, Alphair of Winnipeg, and Dimplex North America. In many ways, Meteor provides a "value added" function. Its castings are in turn used by other companies in the manufacture of industrial products in the transportation, mining, robotic, and other areas.

"Aluminum casting is a relatively small industry today," Wittich said, "but we keep busy by relying on our reputation and by providing a good level of customer service." He added that a timely embrace of new technology, combined with positive relations with suppliers, customers and employees also play a key role in Meteor Foundry's financial stability.
Wittich said the efficient delivery of its products remains an important ingredient in Meteor's ability to maintain its current sales base, and to attract new customers. In addition, the company strives for a short turnaround period from the placement of original orders to final delivery. "Six to eight weeks is the industry average," Wittich said, "but we try to complete most deliveries in a shorter period of time. Four weeks remains the ideal."

It's a given in practically all industries that innovation and the embrace of state-of-the-art technology translate into business success. At Meteor Foundry, the company has a long track record of exploiting technology for business advantage. Wittich pointed to the use of CAM systems, computerized tracking control systems and computer aided design (CAD) as beneficial elements of Meteor's operations. These innovations allow the company to make foundry calculations, coordinate production and draw shipping and delivery schedules with the aid of computers. The system also allows instant communication and trouble-shooting for customers.
The core of Meteor's operation is its sand and permanent mould operations and its finishing area. The moulding equipment in the sand foundry includes four "jolt-squeeze" lines featuring a palletized mould storage, a rotor lift line for medium-sized matchplate operations, and related equipment for larger matchplate jobs, and high production runs.

The company's hand-moulding department has kept up to date in the industry with the recent addition of a combined jolt squeeze/rollover draw machine that allows for more efficient handling of larger-sized moulds. This is supplemented by a three-ton overhead crane for positioning of the heavier moulds.

While a description of Meteor's equipment and operations would be more meaningful to metallurgists and foundry experts, there is little doubt the company personnel take pains to bring precision and integrity to their finished products. Like any similar foundry, Meteor Foundry uses olivine sand to bring superior a superior finish to its aluminum and zinc alloy castings. The company updated its own sand system seven years ago by purchasing a Simpson multi-mull continuous sand mixer. This equipment automatically controls the moisture level and compactness of the sand applied to the various castings. This in turn allows Meteor to turn out consistently superior finishes.

The heart of any foundry or metal-working operation lies in its furnaces and melting equipment. At Meteor, the "fire" is supplied by two 800-pound and four 600-pound electric furnaces. These powerhouses, coupled with two additional 500-pound gas-fired furnaces, give Meteor an overall pouring capacity of 12,000 pounds per day - minimum, based on a one-shift operation.

Meteor's pattern shop, designed to produce patterns in wood, metal and plastic, allows for precision tooling for any of the company's range of moulding efforts.

After the heat, moulding and sand work are applied, foundry workers must finish the castings to meet the expectations of the various customers. Meteor sees to finishing with specialized equipment, including four double-ended grinders, two vertical grinders, two sandblasters, and a single "shotblasting" machine.

Finally, the company machine shop - in some ways the last stop in the process - features a chucking lathe, a vertical machine centre, three milling machines, two engine lathes, and five drill presses.

An emphasis on quality control is more than a cliché at Meteor Foundry. The company's metallurgical engineer and staff investigate all phases of the production, making use of a fully equipped laboratory.

Quality assurance ties in well with general trends in the North American foundry industry. The integrity of the metal casting involves much than "lost wax" and sand "shake out." Foundry industry watchers, includes those posting their findings on the Internet, have described a "revolution" in production techniques. In the last 20 years, experts say, a revolution has taken place in the aluminum foundry industry regarding the treatment of molten aluminum alloys. Since the beginning of the aluminum foundry industry, foundry workers regarded the melting furnace as a device to change the alloy from ingot to molten alloy. The belief that the metal could be "treated" in the liquid state was seen as a mistake by most foundry personnel.

The time that the alloy spends in the furnace is seen as a manufacturing process that produces quality molten metal for castings. Quality molten metal is an alloy of proper chemical composition, free from tramp elements, and with a minimal level of dissolved gas. Other factors leading to a superior product include a minimum level of inclusions, the correct pouring temperature (at the correct nucleation potential and at the correct modification potential to promote the desired microstructure).

According to industry watchers, the challenge to the metallurgist in the university today is to promote a method to remove thin aluminum oxide films that form each time the aluminum alloy surface is broken. Prevention, detection, and removal of these oxide films in the aluminum casting alloys are the next important research area in molten metal processing.

These metallurgical issues aside, however, Meteor Foundry must contend with non-scientific concerns. With annual sales hovering around the $6.5 million mark, Meteor Foundry is holding its own in an industry that some see as stagnant or even in decline. Part of the problem stems from the limited application of aluminum castings. A more immediate concern however, is finding workers who are prepared to put up with the heat, dust, and other unpleasantries on the foundry floor.

A wintertime visitor is impressed with the inviting warmth wafting through the plant from the foundry furnaces. That very heat, utilized in place of conventional heating systems, has its down side in the warm weather, when interior temperatures can climb to more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. When combined with the dust and noise associated with all modern foundry operations, foundry operators, including Meteor, must always be concerned with providing the best working environment possible under difficult circumstances. It's a problem common to the foundry industry and it has encouraged owners and managers to emphasize the other benefits of foundry-related employment.

Klaus Wallentin, sales manager at Meteor Foundry, said staffing problems do not prevent the company from an emphasis on technology and capital improvement.

"There is a constant investment in capital equipment as a way of increasing sales and becoming more efficient," he said. Nonetheless there remains a challenge to promote foundry work as a positive employment option.

"It seems that the younger people today want to get into more glamorous kinds of work," he said. "It's an age-old problem in the foundry business, but no one wants to get dirty anymore."

Wallentin's comments come despite the company's emphasis on workplace health and safety, and its clean bill of health from the Ontario labour ministry.

Despite the working environment, Meteor is part of a larger foundry industry that brings enormous benefits to the Canadian economy. According to the Canadian Foundry Association, the metal casting industry results in annual sales of more than $1.5 billion across the country. The industry, made of large, medium, and small foundries, directly employs approximately 15,000 people.

Other benefits derived from the metal casting industry at large include Canada's export balance and advances in recycling metals and related technology. More than 60 per cent of the total Canadian foundry industry output is exported. As well, foundries were among the first industries to explore the advantages of recycling.

The Canadian Foundry Industry also cites the importance of metal castings as a first step in the important "value added" manufacturing chain. Metal casting is regarded as an essential industry in that the output is used in the manufacture of most durable and consumer goods.

Finally, the industries served by foundries and metal casting include automotive, construction, mining, forestry, agriculture, railways, aeronautics, plumbing, industrial machinery, electrical and various staples of Canada's resource-based economy.