Stahl Specialty Company, Kingsville, MO, celebrates 50 years of serving the aluminum foundry industry

Mid-America Commerce & Industry, Feb 01, 1996

Stahl Special Company, the recognized leader in the aluminum foundry industry, is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year.

The classic American success story, Stahl was started by Glenn Stahl in a small one-room shop in 1946 and currently employs more than 800 people at its plant in Warrensburg, Missouri and two plants in Kingsville, Missouri.

Throughout its 50-year history, the company has produced products ranging from simple, lightweight handles for construction tools, bases for computer terminals and arrows for weather vanes to huge housings and cooling tower fan blade hubs weighing several hundred pounds.

Stahl's customer base includes man who have been with the company since the beginning as well as some of the world's biggest names including Caterpillar, Allied Signal, Chrysler, General Motors and John Deere.

According to Dick Kneip, market manager for Stahl Specialty Co., the secret to the company's remarkable success over the past 50 years comes down to its high-quality employees.

"Every employee is always on the lookout for ways to exceed customers' expectations," claims Kneip. "In fact, Stahl was one of the first foundries in the country to offer additional services such as the heat treatment of aluminum castings--a procedure which increases the strength of the casting.

"Customers stay with Stahl for such a long time because they can count on us to deliver the high-quality products they need every time," he added.

In the early '50s, Leonard Goodall contacted Glenn about making the mower deck or the new rotary lawn mower he'd just developed. Unaware that the industry considered a casting of this size to be too big for the permanent mold process, Stahl employees built the mold and started pouring castings. The aluminum lawn mower deck quickly became one of the first high-volume products for the company. Over the years, Stahl has shipped out many millions.

Another of Stahl's first high-volume jobs was the gas grill barbecue housing. This product, which was developed in the mid '60s, is still in production today. Just last year--thirty years after the first one was cast--Stahl produced 50,000 grill housings.

In addition to handling the casting process itself, Stahl offers complete engineering and design, in-house tooling, heat treatment, metallurgy, complete machining, steel fabrication, shipping and transportation services. Numerous procedures for integrating quality into the casting process from start to finish have been established.

Stahl also made its mark over the past half-century by developing new equipment for the industry. In the mid '50s, Stahl realized the lack of high-quality foundry equipment on the market was keeping the company from serving its customers as effectively as possible.

Stahl employees faced the challenge by developing a new, more efficient "tilt-pour" process of making aluminum castings. This soon became the accepted method of pouring aluminum gravity permanent mold castings throughout the world.

In 1970, Stahl employees designed the Rotary Autocast Machine. This unique machine automatically ladles molten aluminum, enabling a single operator to control up to eight casting stations. To ensure repeat-ability, the degating process was also automated.

Today, you can find the Stahl equipment in foundries all over the world. The company's most recent offering is the exclusive T-4 Heat Treat Furnace that is setting new standards in the heat treating process.

In addition to developing unique casting breakthroughs such as the Rotary Autocast Machine, Stahl was a pioneer in utilizing the "work cell" concept that was hailed as an innovation in the '80s. The utmost in efficiency, this process quickly moves castings as they are removed from the mold on a conveyor to an operator who finishes them. Castings are then placed on the shipping rack, all within a few feet of where the aluminum starts as a bar of ingot.

For information about Stahl Specialty Company, call 816-597-3322 or 800-821-7852.