The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala., has opened a new metalcasting facility to encourage creative collaboration between engineering and art students. It replaces a facility that was razed to make way for the North Engineering Research Center, set to open for the fall 2013 semester. It adjoins a foundry used by the College of Arts and Sciences, and students from both colleges will share expanded and renovated collaborative space. The new building is located in the Bureau of Mines complex. It houses a machine and construction shop used by many departments in the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as a workshop used by the College of Engineering.

“I am excited about the opportunities the new joint-use foundry will present our students,” said Dr. Charles L. Karr, dean of the College of Engineering. “I strongly believe students from the arts and engineering can learn from each other. This space allows our students to enhance their creativity, and it is a plus for the College.”

The new, 5,000-sq.-ft. metalcasting facility will incorporate all basic types of equipment used in operating foundries, and it permits demonstration to students of most of the practices encountered in making cast iron, steel and nonferrous alloys.

Equipment highlights include:

• Three Inductotherm melting furnaces for melting cast iron, steel, brass, bronze and aluminum-based alloys.
• A withdrawal furnace for melting and casting superalloys under vacuum that can produce up to 25-kilogram turbine components cast into ceramic-shell molds.
• Molding equipment and a core machine for making green sand and pepsetbased molds and cores.
• Finishing equipment.
• Spectrometer by Spectro Analytical Instruments.
• An investment casting lab with a 3-D printer “Thermoset” by 3D Systems for making investment patterns.
• A sand-testing lab and a dedicated computer lab where students can perform mold and casting design using advanced casting and ingot simulation software tools.

The withdrawal furnace was acquired from the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

“The Bureau of Mines art and engineering complex will be a space where any student can come create something,” said Dr. Robert Olin, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “This space is meant to provide a place for inspiration and encourage our students to develop their great ideas and turn them into reality. We want them to have somewhere they can get their hands dirty and experience the enjoyment of seeing a project come to fruition.”

The UA metallurgical and materials engineering department is one of just eight metallurgical engineering programs accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, and one of only 20 Foundry Educational Foundation Certified Schools in North America.

“Having a fully functional modern foundry is vital to us being able to maintain our ABET accreditation as a metallurgical engineering program,” Acoff said. Additionally, Acoff said an FEF board certification team visited the facility in January, and it will recommend UA be re-certified for another five-year term to the FEF board of directors later this month at a meeting on campus.