St. Marys Foundry wins Prestigious Casting of the Year | News | theeveningleader.com

The St. Marys Foundry has won the 2024 Casting of the Year for their Power Frame which is used in the fracking industry.

The St. Marys Foundry has won the Casting of the Year Award at the American Foundry Society’s 2024 Metalcasting Congress held in April. The award recognizes outstanding achievements in the foundry industry and is among the most sought-after awards.

“We do difficult things and I think we're always internally proud of what we do, but I think it was very edifying to have people go, ‘Wow, how did you guys do this?’ And then be able to share that with the team,” said the Foundry’s Managing Director Angela Schmeisser.

SPM Oil & Gas, a Caterpillar company, approached the foundry looking to see if they could create a casting to replace a part that was currently welded together and which is used in the fracking industry. The casting would have to pressurize fluid to 15,000 psi which is then used deep underground to release oil and gas.

“They were converting from a weldment to a casting and that was kind of the project scope. We helped give their design engineers some guidance on what features or modifications would make it more castable,” said Metallurgical Engineer Karl Warsinski.

To create the casting, Production Manager Brian Anderson explained they had to bolt five large cores together to create the design of the interior spaces. A core is made of sand that has a binder added to it that allows the sand to maintain its shape, even when molten metal is flowing around it. Schmeisser said that when they’re putting together these cores it can be tough to picture the casting because the shapes the cores form are voids where metal will flow.

“I tell people that it's tough because we’re forming air,” said Schmeisser.

“For the size casting it is, it has some pretty tight tolerances. So to get all of that married up and accurate consistently, I think is kind of what impressed people,” said Warsinski. The casting is large measuring 67.4” x 53.4” x 43.6”, and weighs over three tons at 6,600 pounds. When it went to be machined, Production Manager Brian Anderson said that was when they started to receive some valuable feedback about their work.

“We got a lot of feedback from the machine shop machining it. If anything had to be tweaked a little bit or anything like that. I don't think we heard much about field operations until the casting of the year came up,” said Anderson.

The problem that the casting was created to solve was one of durability. Fracking pumps run throughout the day and night, and through extremes in temperature, causing a lot of wear and tear. The old casting saw a lifespan of just 6,000 hours, the one that St. Marys Foundry created lasted much, much longer. Schmeisser said that their casting lasts well over 20,000 hours and that their test casting is at over 24,000.

“They were running so many hours longer than what we thought they would,” said Schmeisser.

This was the first time that the foundry had applied for the award, and winning it was a surprise according to Schmeisser.

“I couldn't believe it. Because I thought, we've never run for it before,” said Schmeisser. Above all, Schmeisser said that winning the award was a reflection of every member of the foundry who made the casting a successful reality. She made clear that every step of the process was one where her team was hands-on in the process to make it a success.

“It felt good, honestly. I haven't been here that long, but to see something like that develop and everything, it's been kind of awesome. It's kind of tough in this industry,” said Core Rammer David Brane. That feeling of pride and success in a heavy industry was something that was shared by every person interviewed at the foundry. A sense of accomplishment that showed pride in their work, pride in their industry, and pride that their foundry won such a prestigious award.

“It says a lot because there's a lot of other foundries out there, and I'm just going to say that we're number one. To earn that, we are number one,” said Core Room Supervisor Dale Ball.

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