Engineering activity at Albany Chicago is crucial to the development of our products. The relationship between the part design and the cast, machined and assembled solution is our central focus. We design in solids, simulating and optimizing the casting shapes and features, integrating economy and suitability to function. The design and simulation of the process is then developed around the engineered geometry. We offer an in-house, full service, engineering solution to customer casting needs. Our engineering department works closely with your design resources while freeing them to work on other tasks.

Our products are native PRO-E: or SDRC-Ideas solids. We also offer support to the various other modeling products through use of translators, partner resources, or the addition of workstations to allow for the smooth transfer of information. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is central to all our production offers. We insure that the structures offered will support the defined customer requirements. We use ANSYS and SRDC for our FEA simulation on a network of HP-Unix workstations.

At Albany-Chicago, casting simulation is a critical link in the process development phase of all projects. We use Flow3D, Castflow, castTherm, NovaCast, and other proprietary software to insure the process is engineered as carefully as the product design. This simulation link targets closer relationships between process design and operations. We build part specific documentation on each project that defines the operational flow in graphic detail. This documentation is operator driven and is the work instruction tying customer expectations, process development, and machine practices together. This includes full APQP involvement and QS9000 document control.

Albany-Chicago has a special prototype group to take care of customer prototyping needs. This involves various casting methods coupled with full, in-house, dedicated, machining and assembly resources.

For the customer, these services mean smooth project launches free of unpleasant surprises.