General Foundry Practice

Abstract

THE opinion is generally held among metallurgists that with the rapid progress made of recent years in Gren Britain in the metallurgy of iron the foundry has hardly kept pace. Mr. McWilliam and Mr. Longmuir take a more optimistic view, and believe that advances have been, and are being, made of a magnitude commensurate with those of other industries. Certainly signs of progress are apparent in this important branch of metallurgy. The empirical method of charging the cupola is giving place to the system of weighing all materials in proportions determined by the chemist. High-temperature measurement is being practised in the core and drying stove. The field for machine moulding is extending. Permanent moulds made of carbon or similar material are being tried; and the founder is just realising the fact that micrographic analysis has a commercial value. In short, in all branches of his work he is showing a praiseworthy desire to emerge from the slipshod ways of the past. The literature of the subject has, however, remained meagre, and not of a strikingly scientific character. Scattered through the pages of the Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute and of the iron trade journals there is much information of permanent value; but the special treatises on the subject are mostly of an elementary character. The exhaustive work by Mr. McWilliam and Mr. Longmuir may therefore fairly be regarded as marking an epoch in the history of iron founding, and should help greatly in effecting a clear understanding of the subject. The authors possess special qualifications for the work they have undertaken. Mr. Longmuir has held the position of foundry foreman, and is a Carnegie research medallist of the Iron and Steel Institute, while Mr. McWilliam, a distinguished Associate of the Royal School of Mines, has at the University of Sheffield had ample opportunity of ascertaining the needs of students. They have therefore been able to draw upon experience gained under normal foundry conditions and under the conditions of experimental laboratories, and the operations they describe have been personally followed.

General Foundry Practice.

By A. McWilliam P. Longmuir. Pp. vii + 383. (London: Charles Griffin and Co., Ltd., 1907.) Price 15s. net.