AI for metal casting foundries, tested on castings you already quoted and shipped.

Five Census lines, one trade. The federal industry codes put iron foundries (331511), steel foundries other than investment casters (331513), aluminum foundries (331524), other nonferrous foundries, where brass and bronze sit (331529), and nonferrous die casters (331523) on separate lines, and a foundry that goes on to make finished products is classed with those products instead. This page is for the shops on those lines selling castings to equipment makers. Your metals change the paperwork, so your reviewer builds the sample from the mix you actually pour.

The first question on a quote is whether the part fits. A 2022 column in Casting Source, the American Foundry Society's magazine for casting buyers, tells them to stop mailing large mixed packages and to send each foundry the parts that match what it pours, because a poor fit comes back as a no-quote or a price nobody expected. Until they do, someone on your side still opens every package and sorts it. The quote your estimator sent back on each past RFQ shows how that sorting came out, which makes quoting straightforward to judge.

Die casters work from a published list. The North American Die Casting Association's Product Specification Standards name a checklist for new and inherited dies (T-2-1), one for die cast production specifications (C-8-1), and separate Standard and Precision tolerance tables for linear, parting line, draft and flatness dimensions. The 2021 edition numbers each one, so a die caster's RFQ can point at an item directly. A die coming over from another shop brings the inherited tooling questions with it, and those belong on the gap list.

Buyers put the heat number on the casting. Oregon's standard drawing for manhole covers and frames, RD356, dated effective June 1 to November 30, 2026, has them stamped with the manufacturer's initials, the heat number and the point of origin, and calls out gray iron to ASTM A48 Class 35B for the adjustment ring on the same sheet. A certificate has to agree with what is stamped, and one that reads correctly but names the wrong heat is the sort of error your quality staff catch by hand today. Every certificate you have shipped has a heat record behind it, so that job can be scored the same way as a quote.

Two later jobs come out of the same files. A 2019 Casting Source article describes how many US foundries price ferrous metal: a fixed base, a per-pound surcharge figured from an index and formula the two sides agree on, often adjusted quarterly, and a price change authorization both sides approve. Patterns are the other. North Carolina's statute on dies, molds, forms and patterns (G.S. 66-67.3) leaves ownership with the customer unless a written agreement says otherwise, and lets the maker take title after three years without use, once written notice has gone by registered mail and the customer has not acted. Other states have their own rules, and none of this page is legal advice.

One limit covers both jobs. Nothing in the proof of concept touches your ERP, foundry or quality system, a live quote or a live certificate, and nothing it produces decides that a heat or a casting meets a specification. An estimator checks every quote and quality staff release every certificate. Defense and aerospace castings stay out of the test.