In this guide 6 sections
Foundry management software joins the records a foundry keeps in separate places: customer orders, pattern and core data, melt and heat records, moulding, fettling, inspection and dispatch. Its main job is traceability, so any casting can be followed back to the heat that poured it.
Why foundry records drift apart
A foundry runs on hand-offs. The sales desk holds the enquiry, the pattern shop holds the drawing, the melt deck holds the chemistry and the dispatch gate holds the truck. Each keeps its own sheet.
A customer returns a casting with a crack or a hard spot, and someone must walk the floor and open three registers to find which heat poured it. The answer is often a guess.
Software does not change how metal behaves. Metal is metal. What software changes is the speed of the first answer to every customer complaint, which is always the same question: which heat?
- Order register in one file, melt log in a bound book
- Pattern numbers typed differently by each department
- Inspection results on loose sheets in the quality room
- Dispatch slips that carry no heat reference
The melt side: charge, chemistry and heat
A heat record starts at the furnace. It holds the charge mix of pig iron, returns and scrap, the additions, the tap temperature and the spectrometer reading for carbon, silicon, manganese and the rest.
Each heat gets a number and each ladle drawn from it gets a sub-number, so the pair names every mould that ladle filled and every casting poured from it. That pair is the thread. Without it nothing downstream can be trusted.
Good software flags a heat with chemistry outside the grade limits before pouring, because a warning at the ladle beats a rejection at the customer.
From pattern to mould to casting
The pattern record stores casting number, revision, shrinkage allowance, core boxes and cavities per mould, and moulding logs which pattern ran on which line. A ladle number sits on every mould.
Shake-out, shot blasting, fettling and heat treatment each add a stamp that records who handled the lot, how many pieces went in and how many came out. Scrap gets a reason code. Sand inclusion, shrinkage and misrun are typical entries.
Reason codes feed back to pattern and melt practice. The picture builds slowly. Over a few months you see that one pattern scraps more on the night shift, and you can act on it.
- Pattern and core box master with revision
- Mould log linking line, pattern and ladle
- Stage counts with scrap reason codes
- Heat treatment batch with furnace chart reference
Inspection, certificates and dispatch
Inspection holds dimensional checks, hardness, tensile and impact results and magnetic particle reports, each attached to the heat or lot it came from rather than to a loose filename.
At dispatch the system pulls those results into the certificate the customer asked for and prints the heat number on the packing list. Returned parts find their melt quickly.
Invoices, delivery challans in your own country’s format and transporter details sit in the same record, so accounts see what quality has already released.
Choosing what to computerise first
Start where a wrong answer costs most. For most foundries that is the heat record and the link from heat to casting, because every later screen leans on that chain being right from the first pour. Orders and stock can follow. Wait until that chain holds.
Walk one casting from enquiry to dispatch and write every sheet it touches, since each handwritten copy of a heat number is a place where the chain can break.
Then ask a vendor to show that same casting traced back to its heat on screen, using your data, not a demo set.
Foundry record map worksheet
Eight rows, eight stages. Rows follow the casting from order, pattern and melt through mould, fettling, heat treatment and inspection to dispatch, eight in all. Columns hold the record kept today, who writes it, where it lives, the key number it carries and whether that number links to the heat. A final column marks gaps.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Is foundry software the same as a general ERP?
Not quite. A general ERP handles orders, stock and accounts, but a foundry needs heat, ladle, pattern and mould records as proper fields, while many ERPs treat those as free-text notes.
Can it connect to a spectrometer?
Often yes. Many spectrometers export a result file, which the software reads and attaches to the heat as chemistry, so nobody retypes the numbers by hand.
Does a small jobbing foundry need this?
It depends on your customers. If you pour for customers who ask for certificates or return defective parts, yes, and a small shop can begin with heat records and the link to castings.
How long does it take to set up?
That depends on how many stages you track. Heat and casting traceability alone is a smaller job than a full order-to-dispatch rollout covering pattern shop, moulding line, fettling bay and dispatch gate. Ask for a phased plan.