Waupaca Foundry

Product: KingScan® IVe

Customer: Waupaca Foundry
Industry: Foundry and Casting

Waupaca Foundry is headquartered in Waupaca, WI with other locations in Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.  Waupaca Foundry is an industry-leader in producing gray iron, ductile iron, austempered ductile iron and compacted graphite.  In addition to producing industry-leading products, Waupaca is also dedicated to sustainable practices, environmental innovations and helping its communities.

Waupaca Foundry produces castings that weigh between 2 and 350 pounds.  Waupaca melts over two million tons of iron each year in the process of creating castings so naturally it is a very hot and dusty environment.  When the castings are complete the employees at Waupaca use microscopes for indent readings after testing the hardness of the castings. This only happens periodically though because it is done before releasing a new product.

Problem:
Waupaca used a B.O.S.S., an automatic microscope, to obtain its readings after testing.  But there were issues with the B.O.S.S. that led to inaccurate and inefficient readings.

Firstly, the lighting for the B.O.S.S. was not sufficient and accurate readings difficult to obtain.  Sometimes the indents are extremely small or the indents are on different materials that are hard to get readings on.  Secondly, the B.O.S.S. is not mobile enough to take out in the field.  All in all the B.O.S.S. was inefficient and gave inaccurate readings.

Solution:
Waupaca discovered the KingScan® IVe.  The KingScan® is an automatic Type-A microscope. They can adjust the lighting and exposure based on the size of the indent and the material of the test piece.  The KingScan® IVe also only weighs two pounds and is compatible with a tablet or laptop in addition to a desktop computer so it is extremely mobile and can be taken into the field.  

The employees at Waupaca noticed a huge difference in the quality of readings they got and the efficiency of the process.  They are now able to get the highest quality, most accurate readings whenever and wherever they want.