Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Foundry






A couple of weeks ago we shot part of a tvc in a foundry. It was a great location and all very Dickensian. Most of the work they do is sand casting with iron so it is dirty , heavy work. These guys are packing the sand around the patterns , then removing the pattern without breaking the sand away.
All the patterns are put on a conveyor waiting to be filled with the molten iron. It reminded me of some of the locations that were used in the terminator films.
Everything gets covered in the blue powder that gets painted over the moulds. I can only guess that it is a mould release agent of some sort. We had to get some replicas made of some of their castings so that they could be man handled without injuring anyone. The ones hanging off the gantry are the replicas. (with a bit of license) These were cast from a lightweight foam by the people at "Maker + Doer" .