Specializing in open die forgings and seamless rolled rings, All Metals & Forge Group found its niche as a manufacturer and supplier of ferrous and non-ferrous materials in 1972. Serving aerospace, aviation, construction, defense, energy, fabrication, gas and oil exploration, manufacturing, petroleum, and general metal-working industries, the company recently closed its service center to focus entirely on its forging operations.
Lewis Weiss, director of sales and marketing for All Metals & Forge Group, LLC, said he’s spent 50 years in the metal business working in the service center industry before starting All Metals& Forge Group where he a established a service center and the open and single die forging division.
“We were primarily focused on the aerospace and defense industry and because of the wild fluctuations in the market, we built a more broad-based business by offering carbon alloy stainless steel material for the oil and gas, energy, machinery. mining and the gear industries,” he said.
The company produces gear blanks for the domestic gear market and exports roughly 20 to 25 percent of its material overseas, according to Weiss.
“We are now researching the possibility of expanding our operations in the first quarter of next year to San Paolo, Brazil, to serve Argentina, Chile, Columbia and Brazilian markets,” he said. “With 200 million people in Brazil, it’s not too dissimilar from the U.S. in mining, oil and gas, and ship building. That’s exactly our market. South America seems to be a good fit for expansion. There is no real market in Europe and the United States is sort of here, there and everywhere. We decided we needed to expand our market and opening in Brazil where it’s very ripe; Brazil will probably soon be the number three oil producer in the world; it just makes sense for us.”
With manufacturing facilities in Cleveland, Ohio, producing carbon alloy and lower grades of stainless steel, and the Los Angeles, California, facility producing high-end stainless steel nickel alloys and titanium-grade forging, All Metals & Forge Group offers diverse sizes and capabilities for its customers.
“Our facility in Cleveland can produce forgings up to about 45,000- to 50,000-pounds and rings up to 120 inch diameter. The West coast facility can go up to 315 inch diameter, but we’ve only taken it up to about 214 inches there,” he said. “There are logistical problems with shipping 60,000-, 70,000-, and 80,000-pound forgings so we have two facilities that produce similar items, but with different materials and size ranges in five different types of metal (stainless steel, alloy steel, carbon steel, tool steel, copper alloys, nickel and titanium alloys).”
All Metals & Forge produces rings, flanges, gear blanks, single and double hubs, trunnions, bevel gear blanks, couplings, seamless rolled rings, rims, center hubs, sleeves, gear blanks, discs (pancake forgings), pinion shafts, step-downs, spindles, rack forgings in gear quality carbon and alloy steels with through-hardening, carburizing and bearing quality grades with forged-in steps to save on machining. Shafts are available up to 45-feet-long and 50,000 pounds and the company can produce part weights from under 100 pounds to more than 30 tons for the gear industry.
Typical gear industry materials include 1018, 1020, 1045, 15B22, 17 CrNiMo6, AMS 6414, AMS 6415, AMS 6427, MIL-S-5000, and applicable ASTM specifications. Other carbon and alloy steel grades and material conditions can be produced and rough machined to a forging print or finish machined to a part print, according to Weiss. In addition to the previously mentioned grades, stainless, tool steels, titanium, and aluminum grades are available for industries such as aerospace and the industrial mold industry, and forged shaft, stepped and straight shafts are used frequently with machinery and ship building trades. The company is ISO 9001:2008 and AS/EN 9100:2009 Rev. C certified since 1998.
Weiss said the company focuses on open die forgings because open die has deliberately oriented grain flow in the direction requiring maximum strength, which yields greater impact and directional strength for cost savings in the near net shape part with reduced raw material waste resulting in less machining time and longer tool life.
“With closed die you are literally just punching out parts at near net shape to an almost finished product,” he said. “Closed die is used in the automotive industry where you are making millions of parts. Open die is more custom and a lot more effort goes into it and after forging so you would do rough machining down to final machining. With gears, we sell 100, 200, 500 gear blanks and you are using all seamless rolled ring rollers where you used to use a hand forged ring that would take 15 to 20 minutes, you can now produce a ring roller every 30 to 40 seconds. If you want to produce 10,000 rings, you might not go the open die ring roll route.”
“One of the benefits we give to our clients which I think is somewhat different from other forging shops is that in addition to quality, which is a given, we stress service delivery,” Weiss said. “Between 85 and 90 percent on-time delivery and our quoting estimating department will quote within 48 hours. We quote about 80 percent of the quotes we put out within a couple hours, which really is a plus and a minus. We follow up and ask ‘what do you think of our quote and the customer will say they still haven’t heard back from other companies on their prices yet,’ so I think people really come to count on our capability to turn around quoting a project quickly.”
Weiss said the company attitude is “client for life,” and this attitude has helped the company achieve long-term success and long-term clients.
“We stand behind our quote and we like to partner with our customers,” Weiss said. “I would prefer to have partners than a buyer/seller arrangement. We also give first time customers a three percent rebate after the job has been bought, shipped and paid for up to $150,000 so they can see the value we bring to the table.”
All Metals & Forge Co. also prides itself on being able to provide broad size ranges up to 214 inches.
“We ship everything rough machined and do some value added machining with flanges, bore holes and contours. We try to stay away from doing final machining because of the danger of shipping a finished machine part,” he said. “We leave more tolerance on the part so the client can do the final machining. We do a 125RMS finish for the part, which is finished to a fine clean surface. Everything that we ship is ultrasonically tested to make sure there are no cracks, voids, pits or anything wrong internally with the material to avoid defects.”
The company actually performs two ultrasonic tests – one at the start and stop before forging and then after the forgings to make sure the product is 100 percent.
“We also do work with clients where the customer supplies the raw stock. For example, we got a contract from a customer who was working with his client who was placing an order. Our customer went ahead and bought a 40,000-pound truckload of steel and then his customer went and changed the size so now the raw material was too small. We got the prints and saw what the part looked like and he went and bought 12-foot bars that we cut to make the final parts. We can take the final bars and cut them with offset forging where you virtually turn the parts upright and with the forging hammer you make a tool where you can hammer the head and wind up forcing the material to become bigger and shorter. So we presented this whole project to him and we got the order last week. We like thinking out of the box to solve our customer’s problems. They supply the material, and we cut it, do the tool, do the upset forging and return it to our customer so his shop is saved 40,000 pounds of material that would have otherwise been junk.”
By investing time, resources and being open to expansion in new markets or new territories, Weiss said All Metals & Forge Group is accomplishing its goal of being the name manufacturers’ call when they need open die forgings and seamless rolled rings.
To learn more:
call 973-276-5000 or visit www.steelforge.com.
