Well May was a rather exciting month for Ballantines welcoming not one, but two, Hollywood celebrities to the foundry whilst still getting on with the day to day job of manufacturing. Our box yard was transformed into a film set for the filming of the BBC’s Rillington Place starring Tim Roth and Samantha Morton with the 3 part series set to air at the end of the year.
Our traditional moulding shop has been something of a favoured location for film crews over our 160 year history having filmed a number of scenes at the foundry for different productions. One of our personal favourites has to be when we welcomed the late and inimitable Fred Dibnah to the foundry – a clip of which can be seen on the link below;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVVFLGdrFP0
Celebrity excitements aside, we are constantly staggered to see the amount of various products that pass through the foundry on a monthly basis and the first 5 months of the year have proved no different. We’ve attached a few photographs of items for perusal and highlighted some of our favourites below. Aside from the usual engineering items (pumps, valves, gearboxes, seals, gear wheels, water valve castings, impellors, compressor and blower castings) we’ve produced a number of pretty exciting items.
Arguably the most exciting was a number of roof tiles for a client in London; it’s not every day that you get asked to cast a roof tile in ductile iron that measures over 3 metres long and 1.5 metre wide – but we were asked to make 6. Separate patterns had to be made for each tile and all items made to CT9 dimensional accuracy to ensure they correctly slotted into the apertures of their predecessors. The turnaround on the patterns and castings was 5 weeks from receipt of an order and the 750kg roof tiles are currently on route to take pride of place at the Palace of Westminster. To learn more about our architectural casting capabilities please follow the link below;
https://ballantinecastings.co.uk/markets/architectural/
We’ve also launched a number of prototype castings for engineering clients throughout the UK and abroad. This year alone we have launched over 62 prototype castings for a number of engineering clients throughout the UK. We are constantly providing castings to the valve and pump sector and this week received an order from a new client for 2,316 valve stop castings. |These will be turned round at a rate of 650 castings per week. To find out more about or engineering castings capacity please follow the link below
https://ballantinecastings.co.uk/markets/engineering-castings/
Finally we have been really busy producing a new range of drainage castings for export to Scandinavia. Batches of 100 drainage units are currently being prepared for export in a range of cast iron and aluminium. In addition to this we have cast a range of 150mm – 250mm running traps and interceptor traps. To see our standard drainage products please follow the link below;
