| Abstract Scope |
The journey from machine shop to a position of global leader in Direct Chill (DC) aluminum casting technology began when a distressed father with six mouths to feed purchased a new lathe for the backyard shop housed in the pump house and paid for the lathe by machining components for the lathe manufacturer. Eventually, his two sons, Bill and Frank Wagstaff, would focus their visions in life at the root of two developing technologies: (1) the dawning of computer-controlled machine tools, and (2) the emergence of DC casting for the production of semi-finished aluminum products, i.e., extrusion ingot and large format rolling slab ingot, as the dominant process after WWII. In doing so, they merged their skills in machine tool design and materials research into a business known and recognized across the world as the premier molten aluminum solidification technology. |