Metal Casting Zone

Open a thread to echo scootydawg.

I am really crazy because the downturn of the whole industry. Is anyone in this forum working in castings industry other than hobbies?

Let's talk how does the economic crisis affect us.

I will start first.

Well, I am working for a company last year selling various machining parts abroad. This company is medium size but equipped by very advanced production line and machines. From the 4th quater last year, we started to get requests from lots of our bigggest customers about order cancelations or delivery delays, along with order declining.

Later I quitted my job when my labor contract expires. I came back home to celebrate Chinese new year holiday and rested around one month. When walking around the street I couldn't sense any differences just like every routine day, but actually there are things and hidden behind the context of the economic crisis.

As all of you know China is short of anything but labors, in these 3 years after my college graduation I have been very used to the crowd scenes of job fairs, but I still got surprised by the fairs I recently attended. I started looking for a new job from middle Feb, job fair is definitely a shortcut because these companies do need recruit and have available positions since they pay money to the fair host. Therefore chances are much bigger than just post resumes on website.

During 14 days, I went 8 job fairs, wow...there are too many ppl that I barely can move my feet, I took out my cellphone, but could not phone or msg because mobile network was out of its load and was dead even the signals was full. At certain fair, we were queuing for around 800 meters waiting for partial entrance permission and the long queue lasted around 3hours.

Ok, this is not the worst thing, the real worst thing is that there's not too many satisfying positions, I would say too many crappies, some training schools even get in and "recruit" students, of course, no free students.

Well lucky I am, still got a job within this industry. I should be happy already, but the 1st news I heard on my first day was that order's been not enough and seems this trend continues...You guys understand how I felt when I was hired to be sales???

I suggested to advertise on alibaba or some platform, but boss is very cautious at this moment. I just thought a classic dialogue in game Gears of War:"You are the support, son." when I heard no engagement in trade fair and any advertisement.

Now around 15 days passed, I am really getting crazy by post my free trade leads on free b2b website(seems useless), and occasionaly I get here, well, I am deciding to have some relax, and enjoy the communities from time and time.



Tell us your story and what you gonna do(I hope it is economic crisis related)?

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BTW, the company I worked last year has made some redundancies to its foundry...If choose some words that I do not want to see are No1. Redundant and No1. Lay off and No1. Fired.

all i can give you is a big welcome to the forums from queensland australia. im just run a hobby foundry in my backyard supplying parts for my models. unfortunately in my lifetime over 40 yrs.the"backyard" becomes very productive in a reccession! people havent got the money to buy ready made stuff or parts for something are no longer made.times have been always tough for me so i really cant tell. ive always had to make everything,scounge what i could,modify,and recycle. ive taken to backyard casting like a duck to water. i have many requests for what i make but the people only want to pay for the fuel and nothing for labour.i think its because they would need to do a bit of labour to finish the part as they do offer to pay for machining.best of luck to all that are being hurt by the global crisis.

xlchainsaw wrote:
all i can give you is a big welcome to the forums from queensland australia. im just run a hobby foundry in my backyard supplying parts for my models. unfortunately in my lifetime over 40 yrs.the"backyard" becomes very productive in a reccession! people havent got the money to buy ready made stuff or parts for something are no longer made.times have been always tough for me so i really cant tell. ive always had to make everything,scounge what i could,modify,and recycle. ive taken to backyard casting like a duck to water. i have many requests for what i make but the people only want to pay for the fuel and nothing for labour.i think its because they would need to do a bit of labour to finish the part as they do offer to pay for machining.best of luck to all that are being hurt by the global crisis.

Hello xlchainsaw, thank you and thanks for sharing your story. Is your hobby foundry totally running by yourself? I mean is everything of every casting process done by you? I think ppl like your castings and therefore they gave lots of requests. But if they do not want to pay for labour, why not tell some lies and add that costs to fuel?

Just a suggestion and maybe it's not correct.

i do everything. im just trying everthing at the moment. lots of pattern work. i would like to hit on a pattern that i could cast that would sell so as to help out with costs.
everyone on here has the ability to do likewise.