Waukesha Manufacturing - History

Waukesha Manufacturing is a fully integrated iron foundry located in Southeast Wisconsin, in the city of Waukesha.  Located on the outskirts of historic downtown Waukesha, the plant consists of an 18 acre site located near the east bank of the Fox River and is in the center of an older residential area.

The site has been a foundry for 113 years since its original construction in 1896.  The foundry was started by the Gladys family and named General Malleable Corp, originally producing a variety of grey and malleable iron parts for local businesses utilizing cupola melt and gas fired reverb furnaces utilizing the hand built in- floor molding method. 

The foundry was then acquired by the Federal government during WW2 to directly supply and support the war effort.  During this time the foundry transitioned to 100% malleable iron production.  After the war ended the foundry was purchased by Navistar in 1946 to operate as a “captive” supplier to supply malleable components to various other Navistar (International Harvester) assembly plants including the IH plant in Milwaukee.

Once the process to produce ductile iron became commercially viable, WM transitioned to 100% ductile iron production in 1981 – utilizing both the “in mold” and “tundish box” methods of conversion while still continuing as a 100% supplier to Navistar plants.

The plant has gone thru many changes and upgrades since its first construction – it still occupies the original 18 acre site as it is now “land-locked” with a combination of new and older residential homes and a few commercial buildings - under the current configuration there is about 240,000 square feet  under roof mainly for manufacturing and related offices.

 Over the years the manufacturing process had come to include; melting, core making, molding, casting processing (fettling and grinding), heat treating, coating, machining, some assembly and distribution.

Waukesha Manufacturing - Today:

WM has and continues to undergo many changes in order to remain a viable competitor in the foundry industry.  WM continues to focus production on many grades of ductile iron castings and still offers products with various levels of value added processes including all of the processes as listed previously; however, now many of those value add services are now performed by various suppliers called “Tier 2” suppliers while the foundry focuses specifically on the production of castings.  This has helped to improve the overall cost of manufacture and allows WM employees to narrowly focus on the casting process while leaving the value add service expertise to the various T2 suppliers.  Therefore WM now produces and sells the total cast product but does so thru managing a network of T2 suppliers and all related logistics.

In addition to the changes in the manufacturing steps preformed on site, capital expansion and upgrades has also changed the melting and molding methods used.  The cupola was replaced in the early 1970’s with induction electric melt utilizing three 21 ton BBC line frequency furnaces.  A 50 ton induction “Ajax” furnace is located on the melt deck to provide hot iron storage “buffering” between the melt shop and mold lines.  Air pollution control equipment was first installed in the 1970’s and has continued to be upgrade to meet Federal and local requirements.

Two fast “Herman” horizontal “match plate” molding lines were installed in 1974 replacing much of the hand/floor molding and other “blow’/ squeeze” molding machines added in the 30’s and 40’s.  The “H” lines originally produced malleable iron products, and then were converted to ductile iron only in 1981 using flow-thru “tundish box” conversion.  The lines have been upgraded over the years with longer cooling lines and improved molding controls as well as incorporating a 5 ton heated pressure pour induction furnace on one of the lines.

The “east” core shop was completely upgraded over the years and now consists of 8 “Redford” H/V core machines utilizing the “isocure” core process.

A new larger horizontal match plate line (“Iron master”) was installed replacing 2 older lines in 2002.  This is a fully automated line utilizing robotic core storage/retrieval and core set along with a 7.5 ton heated pressure pour induction furnace and 50 ton induction heated holder.  This line has many state of the art improvements and can mold both high and low volume parts but is specifically set up for high volume, highly cored product.

A new second core shop was built to feed the Ironmaster with cores consisting of 3 identical Laempe CBF 50 Horizontal machines – this feeds the robotic core processing/transfer/storage system and is direct coupled to I3.

In summary the plant and equipment is not the newest in the business however with implementation of many new management and business processes and tools is “world class” in its specific material, volume and product types.