Industries · Die casting & foundries
Machine monitoring for die casting and foundry machine shops
Foundries and die casters increasingly machine what they cast — and the machining cell inherits every upstream problem: porosity found at first cut, hard spots that eat tools, batches that arrive late. ThingConnect gives the machining side its own facts.
What casting-fed machine shops deal with
- Scrap discovered in machining gets argued between the foundry and the machine shop with no data on either side.
- Machining cells starve when casting batches run late — recorded, if at all, as generic 'no material'.
- Tool consumption spikes on hard castings and nobody connects it back to the melt or batch.
- The machining section's true capacity is unknown, so casting capacity and machining capacity are planned independently — and collide monthly.
How ThingConnect does it
Scrap attributed, not argued
Reject reasons distinguish casting defects (porosity, inclusions, hard spots) from machining causes — a month of data replaces the weekly blame meeting.
Starvation made visible
'Waiting for castings' becomes a measured downtime category with hours attached — the evidence that gets upstream scheduling taken seriously.
One system across mixed equipment
Machining centers, turning centers, and older machines on one overview — the whole finishing operation, not just the newest cell.
Questions
Before you book a demo
Yes — downtime categories are yours to define, and casting-starvation is a standard one for foundry machine shops. After a month you know exactly how many machine-hours upstream delays cost, which changes that conversation permanently.
Operators can record reject reasons that reference casting quality, and job context identifies which batch was running. Full melt-to-machine traceability is deliberately out of scope — we give the machining side clean facts rather than promising an MES.
It's the typical case. The site survey confirms connectivity machine-by-machine across ages and brands before you commit.
See it on machines like yours
A 30-minute demo, then a pilot on your own floor if it fits.