History of Coastal Foundry

History of Coastal Foundry

Coastal Foundry History

Coastal Foundry Company was founded as an aluminum foundry in 1947 in a garage in the back yard of the present premises and began by manufacturing lighting fixtures. Harold Gluckman purchased the foundry in 1978 and over the next 4 years added numerous new machines and equipment to keep up with the increase in production caused by the oil boom at that time. An automatic green sand regeneration system was one of the many items installed. In 1980, an additional 15,000 square feet of building was added and in 1988, the original old garage and wooden building was replaced with a new 10,000 square foot steel building.. Brass and bronze were added to the range of metals poured and today Coastral Foundry manufactures castings in a number of different aluminum and copper based alloys. The foundry premises today consists of 2 acres of land with approximately 30,000 square feet of production facilities. The production equipment used is considerable, involving numerous molding machines, shell core machines, automatic sand recirculation systems, compressors, gas fired furnaces, an induction furnace, cut-off machines, grinding machines, a wheelabrating machine, vibratory deburring machine, a sand recycling plant and many other items of machinery used in the casting process.

Picture taken in 1984: From left to right.: Scott Solcher, sales engineer, Sharon Mack, Controller; Joe Richard, Factory Manager of sister company, Houston Die Casting Co from 1972 until retirement in 2001; Jim Wey, Sales Manager 1979 to 2006, Factory Manager November 2006 until he passed away suddenly in June 2009, Leonard Rigamonti, Foundry Foremen, 1969 to 1978, Factory Manager 1978 until he passed away suddenly in November 2006, while playing golf in Dallas after an American Foundry Society Directors’ meeting; Harold Gluckman, owner from February 1978 until today.