Dave Haslehurst and the LBBC team recently visited the United States for the ICI Conference in Pittsburgh. In this reflection, Dave shares his thoughts on the event and highlights how conferences like these provide an excellent opportunity to reconnect with colleagues, customers, and like-minded companies across the investment casting sector, as well as to meet new customers and introduce them to our technology and processes.
The conference itself was outstanding, with a range of insightful technical papers and discussions that truly showcased the innovation and ambition within our industry.
As part of the exhibition, we had the pleasure of meeting both existing and new customers. It was encouraging to see continued momentum and confidence across the US investment casting market, with many businesses looking to expand capacity and enhance process capability.
There was significant interest in LBBC’s Core Leaching Technology, particularly from customers aiming to increase production throughput while achieving higher precision and consistency in their leaching process. This aligns closely with our ongoing process development work and reinforces the value of our fully controllable systems for both pressurisation and depressurisation phases.
Alongside the technology itself, there was a great deal of enthusiasm around our consultancy and process development training for core leaching. Many customers are keen to deepen their understanding of the process and its optimisation, and we’re now planning to roll out these specialist training programmes in the US in the near future.
We also noted considerable discussion around dewax recovery and yield improvement, with many customers recognising the advantages of our Boilerclave® systems. The combination of complete control, reliability, and repeatability offered by our dewax autoclaves continues to support foundries in improving yields and reducing scrap rates.
The event generated a strong pipeline of new leads and follow-up opportunities, which we’re now actively pursuing. Following the conference, we visited several customers in the Cleveland area, many of whom are planning exciting expansion projects. These meetings were productive and reinforced LBBC’s position as a trusted partner for both Core Leaching and Boilerclave® systems.
Overall, the trip was a great success — combining knowledge exchange, valuable conversations, and clear signs of growth across the sector.
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