Member Article

Forgemasters completes Bifrangi screw press component contract

Engineering firm Sheffield Forgemasters has produced two huge steel components for one of the world’s largest screw presses in the UK.

The huge 315 tonne and 285 tonne castings will form the carcass of an enormous 70-tonne press for Italian engineering company Bifrangi UK’s Lincoln site.

Bifrangi, which supplies forged parts to the power generation industry including engine crankshafts, is to install the screw press at its Monks Road site as part of a £50m upgrade of its facilities.

The multi-million pound castings required Forgemasters to make pours of 600 tonnes of molten steel.

Forgemasters International Ltd (SFIL), which has a global network of offices, and exports more than 70 per cent of its products, won the contract from German company Schuler Pressen formerly Muller Weingarten, against stiff global competition for the UK-based job.

The table casting measures seven metres in length, four metres wide and three metres in height while the headpiece measures six metres long, four metres high and 3.6 metres high.

Mick Holloway, senior sales manager castings at SFIL, said: “We are one of a select few foundries in the world capable of producing something on the scale of this press.

“Every part of the process is on an expanded scale, even the time. It takes approximately three-weeks for the molten metal to solidify in a cast of that size.

“The table and headpiece will be completely manufactured and finished at Forgemasters including the pattern making, moulding, casting, heat treatment, rough machining, fettling and non-destructive testing, finish machining painting and packing.

“Contractual delivery is September 2013 and the good news is that we are ahead of schedule on this job.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mark Lane .