The main building contains a total floor area of about 150,000 square feet, and there is in addition the usual equipment of sheds for storing foundry supplies of sand, coke, facings, etc. The main portion of the building is well lighted by 41,500 square feet of windows and skylights.
[Photo: A View in the Iron Foundry: original size (24K) | 9x enlarged (178K)]
The heating of the building is accomplished by the use of the warm blast system, with steam coils fed by exhaust steam from the power house and motor driven blast wheels. Much attention is paid to the comfort of the men, and a room containing a full equipment of lockers, lavatories and shower baths is provided.
The building is well equipped with cranes, there being five large travelers in the main bay, six in the cleaning room wing, and eight side bay cranes. All columns in the main bay are fitted with pintles for placing of jib cranes. which can be transferred from one column to another by means of one of the large traveling cranes. There is also one 40-ton crane, which covers the casting storage yard.
The system of cranes is supplemented by tracks connecting portions of the main building with sand and coke sheds, pig and scrap piles, and flask storage.
There are six cupolas of the Colliau type, and two rotary pressure blowers supplying the necessary air blast. The pig iron, scrap and coke are conveyed to the charging floor by electric hydraulic elevators, and the material is weighed on scales just in front of the elevators.
The core oven equipment is complete, there being a number of the well-known Millet ovens for baking small cores and six ovens of medium size, the cars of which are operated by compressed air. There are also three ovens for baking the large cores which require especially careful handling.
In one of the side bays and a portion of the main bay 100 molding machines are in daily use. Several of these are used very successfully in making cores. The cleaning room wing is fitted up with exhaust rumblers, sand blast for cleaning castings, scales for weighing them after they have been cleaned and chipped, and all facilities for the proper distribution of these castings to the various departments of the works.
The weekly output of the foundry at present is about 600 tons of finished castings.