Farrar Corporation Welcomes The Ductile Iron Society of North America

Plant Tour - June 16, 2000

FARRAR Corporation is honored to have the Ductile Iron Society as our guests.  We hope you enjoy your visit to south central Kansas and are able to take something home with you to improve your own operations just we have when we visited your plants in the past during other DIS tours.

FARRAR Corporation is a privately owned company started as a blacksmith shop in the early 1930's by E. C. Farrar.  His sons, Max and Paul, took over operating the company after World War II and developed a line of improvement products for self-propelled combines.  They also provided machined parts for several other manufacturers of agricultural products in the region.  Due to the lack of capacity of ductile iron foundries in the area, the company started its own ductile iron casting foundry in the summer of 1967 to make parts for its own product line.  Shortly thereafter, the company started making patterns, ductile iron castings, and machining parts for some of its other customers.  The first foundry used a gas-fired Reda furnace, melted about 1400 pounds per hour, and had six manual match-plate molding lines when it was closed in 1976.

The company became incorporated in 1974 and started building the present foundry.  The first Hunter automatic molding machine went into operation in 1976 and was used on a manually loaded pallet line.  Additional automatic molding equipment was added during the following years and the manual match-plate lines were gradually phased out until the last one was retired in 1998.  The company has always machined a significant percentage of the castings it pours.  It started utilizing CNC machinery in the machine shop in the early 1980's.

The decision was made in 1988 to discontinue the company's own product line.  Since that time FARRAR Corporation has focused on being a single source for casting design, pattern making, ductile iron castings, machine work, painting, assembly, and heat treating for its customers.

The foundry replaced all three of its Hunter molding machines in 1999 with Robert-Sinto FBN and FBM molding machines.  The furnace is an ABB IT-5 coreless induction furnace that has been upgraded from 1500 kW to 2200 kW.  There are two crucibles with one power supply.  Only one furnace is operated at a time and is currently melting about 48 tons per day by tapping out 1,300 pounds and back charging the same amount about every 13 minutes.  Ductile Iron is produced in a bull ladle using the sandwich or pour-over method.  The foundry and machine shops normally operate on a 10 hour, two-shift per day basis, with maintenance working 3-8 hour shifts per day.

FARRAR Corporation specializes in making ductile iron parts ranging in size from under 1 pound up to about 65 pounds.  The majority of the castings are between 5 and 15 pounds.  The company currently serves approximately 100 different O.E.M. customers throughout the United States in a wide variety of industries.  No industry makes up more than 24% of the company's total sales.  There are currently approximately 1,600 active patterns.  About 65% of the company's sales are generated from machined castings and only about 35% are from raw castings.  Over 55% of the castings the company pours are machined in-house and shipped to the customer as finished products or ready for their assembly line.  The company started production of ADI in the early 1990's and currently has over 100 active patterns for ADI parts.

SH-630 Horizontal Machining Center in Manhattan, Kansas

FARRAR Corporation recently opened a new machining facility on a 33-acre site in Manhattan, Kansas.  Equipment there includes a 13-pallet CNC horizontal machining center, a CNC vertical machining center, a CNC lather, and programmable coordinate measuring machines.  Castings produced by FARRAR Corporation in Norwich and by other foundries will be machined at that facility.  It will focus on high quantity production runs that the Norwich machine shop.  Future plans include building additional foundry capacity and heat treating facilities in addition to expanding the machining facility from its present 31,000 sq. ft.

FARRAR Corporation's total employment is about 145 people.  All facilities are tobacco free.  The company also utilizes a drug-testing program that includes pre-employment, just cause, post accident and random testing.

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