www.engineeringnews.co.nz 35 DIFFERENCE IN DELIVERY AND COMMUNICATION IS SUPREME With more than 30-years of investment casting under its belt, the company sees innovation as its key asset along with experienced staff who can do just that - innovate. The Auckland-based company operates lean, with tight process control, fast throughput and excellent internal quality control. Keeping things tight is an absolute intention meaning that savings can be passed on to its customers. And in true Kiwi spirit, Supreme fights well above its weight. Delivery and communication are where it starts to win the war and when it comes to specialty services, the ‘sweet spot’ comes when it’s time for complex shapes and difficult alloys. The company regularly manufactures castings conforming to many specifications. According to the company, it’s the innovation in projects and the e x t r a - m i l e attitude that lifts them another gear. Here are two cases in point… Trencher chain project Forty-two chain links are used on a trenching machine that cuts through rock using carbide picks. The customer wanted to replace two fabrications, a four piece weld assembly and an eight piece weld assembly. Fabrication involved five sub-contractors meaning a lead time of at least three to four months. Fabrication also limited alloy choice so wear and breakages were an issue. Supreme were asked to improve on the chain. Supremes’ and the customer’s designers combined to come up with a one-piece chain link casting instead of two fabrications. A wax assembly method provided a simple solution to create six different pick configurations. This required one wax die for the main body and one for the pick. The pick holder bore tolerance was fine as-cast so machining was not required. Supreme supplied the finished parts and our lead time was six weeks. The wear and strength question was solved using a work hardening metal. The first contract the chain tackled was cutting hard rock in Tasmania for three months. Customer comment February 2016: “The chain looked as good as new after this contract. We are extremely happy with the result.” Making casting from 3D models Supreme first became aware of making castings from 3D prints at a foundry conference in the USA about 20 years ago. It was very expensive then but has now become a very useful tool for prototyping castings. First a pattern is built from a 3D model. This pattern can be made either from printed wax, PLA, Quickcast SLA or machined from high density foam. The finished pattern is then coated with ceramic. Finally, the ceramic shell is fired to remove the pattern so molten metal can be poured into the shell. These steps seem straightforward but Supreme has invested many hours of R&D to achieve complete removal of the pattern and accurate dimensions and can offer very reliable results using this method. Customer comment March 2016: “We achieved a great result in the machine shop last week largely due to the exceptional accuracy and quality of the castings. The trueness of the tapered bore is quite remarkable.” There’s little doubt that visitors to EMEX 2016 will have a wide array of stands to get through, but one they should target is Supreme Metal Component Solutions on stand ET19. Visit our stand ET19 SUPREME METAL COMPONENT SOLUTIONS LTD Freephone: 0800 5678 929 | Tel: +64 9 276 5335 Email: enquiry@smcs.com | www.smcs.com Supreme can cater for the customer’s needs as seen with this example of a complex thin wall component
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