The multi-million yuan project will equip a new foundry workshop at Gem-Year’s headquarters in Jiashan City, Zhejiang province, more than doubling production capacity at the site. The new workshop will produce brake caliper parts and railway castings.

Gem-Year was founded in 1995 and today makes fasteners and tools for a broad range of applications, including high-speed rail, civil engineering, power generation, automotive, and general machinery - at a number of manufacturing sites in China. Scheduled for commissioning in March 2017, the Complete Foundry solution for the new workshop in Jiashan encompasses a DISAMATIC D3B-555 moulding machine, a new DISA sand plant and a continuous through-feed type DT14-650E shot blast machine from Wheelabrator. It is the second Complete Foundry solution from DISA and Wheelabrator in operation at Gem-Year, following a purchase in 2006 of a DISA 230B moulding machine, DISA sand plant and two Wheelabrator shot blast machines.
This plant produces railway fastening solutions, including baseplates for the fastening of track. It will be relocated to the new workshop and key equipment, including moulding machine, shot blast machine and key sand plant equipment, will be upgraded and modernized. Old and new Complete Foundry will operate alongside one another in the new workshop from 2017. Between the two projects in 2006 and 2016, Gem-Year purchased foundry equipment for its Shandong facility from various competitors, due to differences in price.

The company’s return to DISA and Wheelabrator with this new project recognizes the Total Cost of Ownership value of solutions delivered by DISA and Wheelabrator.

Mr. Yuancheng Ou, Gem-Year Group VP, explains: “The initial investment in the complete solution from DISA and Wheelabrator is higher compared to their competitors, but the quality and efficiency of the equipment more than makes up for this. There are many time, cost and efficiency gains to be made by getting a Complete Foundry out of one hand - and these gains add up. The overall return on investment is much better, especially if we look at the medium to longer term.” Mr. Jerry Huang, Technical Leader at Gem-Year, adds: “With DISA/ Wheelabrator, we have a professional project team at our side that provides a one-stop shop from initial project plan and design through to installation to commissioning. This helps improve the efficiency of project delivery and reduces costs over the whole project period. The DISA/ Wheelabrator team provides a project design that is tailored perfectly to our requirements and needs – they have the deep application knowledge to provide a better solution compared to other vendors.” The Gem-Year Complete Foundry project will benefit from a range of latest DISA and Wheelabrator technologies: DISA’s new cooling drum, new secondary cooling and remoistening (SCR) system and CIM, as well as Wheelabrator’s fully automated shot blast solution.

Mr. Jerry Huang concludes: “This state-of-the-art equipment will improve the quality of our castings, while requiring less manual intervention and maintenance. It’s highly efficient and cost-effective to run.”

The Complete Foundry solution will be delivered to Gem-Year at the end of 2016, with installation and commissioning scheduled for the first quarter of 2017.