Another outstanding Ductile Iron Society meeting was held on September 30 to October 2, 2009 at the Radisson Hotel in West Middlesex, PA.  The format was changed from previous DIS T&O Meetings where we combined with the ICRI (Iron Casting Research Institute) as one Fall Meeting.  It was a great success as we had 123 registered attendees.

Included with the meeting was an outstanding tour of Hodge Foundry in Greenville, PA.  Many thanks to Joe Simko, John McGoldrick and the staff of Hodge for their hospitality offered to the group. 

Aerial view of Hodge Foundry

The conference started off on Wednesday with the Research Committee meeting for four hours.  Even the Research Meeting had a high turnout as 30 members were in attendance.  The minutes of that meeting will be available on the DIS website very soon.  Then in the afternoon we held all four committee meetings along with the Board of Directors meeting at 3pm.

On Thursday we had a very full day of 11 presentations.  Thanks to Bruce Blatzer of ICRI for helping on arranging some of the speakers.  At lunch we introduced four students from different Universities who were attending this meeting.  Jim Csonka (Hickman, Williams & Company) the Chairman of the College & University Relations Committee made the arrangements and your DIS funded the travel expenses for the students to attend.  Each student spent a couple of minutes introducing themselves and describing what they are taking at school along with their individual personal history and work experience.

From Left to Right are Dan Enders (Kent State), Bobby Gyesi (Ohio  State), Ben Moidell (Kent State) and John Fetrow (Penn State)

Each of the student’s resumes are available on the left side of this website if you are interested in hiring a student this year.  The criteria for the student to be invited by the committee are; must be in the metallurgy or similar program at a college and must be a senior looking for work.  Your society through the dues has been very active in supporting this program and encouraging students to go into the foundry industry.  

As always the Banquet on Thursday evening was a great hit.  Unfortunately at the last minute, Joe Farrar (Farrar Corporation) and president of the DIS came down with the seasonal bug and Scott Gledhill (Waupaca Foundry) our Vice President stepped in for Joe.  

Scott Gledhill 

Scott introduced Joe Simko (Hodge Foundry) to give the audience an overview of Hodge Foundry.  That overview will be available on the index on the left hand side of this website when we receive it.  John McGoldrick (Hodge Foundry) then gave us the last minute instructions for the tour the next day.

              Joe Simko                                                                                                                   John McGoldrick                 

The group was treated to a great tour on Friday morning.  Again, thanks go out to all the employees at Hodge for their hospitality.

In closing, I must remind everyone that our Spring 2010 DIS Annual Meeting will be held May 11-13th in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  More information will become available on the front page of our website.  Early arrangements are on the way for the Fall Meeting in 2010 here in Cleveland, Ohio.  Those dates are October 27-29, 2010.  This will be a special three day Technical Presentations on “Heavy Section Castings” with some emphasis on the Windmill Technology.  The program will consist of 2-1/2 days or 20 presentations.  If anyone is interested in presenting a paper, you can contact the organizing committee consisting of John McGoldrick (Hodge Foundry), Prem Mohla (Hickman, Williams & Company) or Jim Wood (DIS).

We will see you all in May 2010 in Vancouver, Canada.  Until then have a safe winter and Happy Holidays!!!