A retired molder in Spokane showed me why we still need old school feel

I met him at a yard sale last month, saw his rough hands and asked if he ever worked a foundry. He said he poured iron for 40 years at the old Western Foundry. When I mentioned our new digital sand tester, he just smiled and said, 'Son, your fingers know a 3% moisture mix before any screen does.' He picked up a handful of dry dirt from his garden, squeezed it, and let it crumble. 'See? That's a 2. Too dry for a good cast.' It made me go back and double check our readings against hand tests for a week. How many of you still use the squeeze test as a backup?

3 comments

3 Comments

evanfox20d ago

That's a great story. What specific kind of castings were you making that week, and did the hand test ever catch a problem the digital reader completely missed?

willow73219d ago

Honestly, it sounds like a process control issue more than a miracle test. If the digital reader was missing major flaws, the whole calibration was probably off that week. I doubt the hand check was finding anything truly wild the tech just completely ignored.

troyjackson11d ago

But that's the whole point, the human check caught stuff the system was blind to by design, not just calibration drift.