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Metal Casting Competition on Camera, with Robert Monroe
134 Plays13 days ago
Robert Monroe talks about the Cast in Steel college metal casting competition, now viewable in a digital show following student teams’ stories.
Related to this episode:
- Cast in Steel on Episode 1 premiere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9nrlzGLOmk
- YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@CastinSteel
- TV show page: https://www.castinsteel.net/tv-show
- Steel Founders’ Society of America: https://www.sfsa.org/
- Casting Dreams: https://castingdreams.org/
Subscribe and find podcast updates at: https://www.k12engineering.net. The K12 Engineering Education Podcast is a production of Pios Labs: http://www.pioslabs.com. Music by FlavioConcini under a Creative Commons 0 License.
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Transcript
Introduction to Cast in Steel
00:00:07
Speaker
Did you hear about the metal casting competition for college students that just got its own show? Hear about it next on the K-12 Engineering Education Podcast.
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody. I'm Pius Wong in Austin, Texas. It's been a while, and I'm happy to share this recent talk I had about the Cast in Steel competition and show, which you can watch online starting this July, 2026.
00:00:41
Speaker
Let's crank it up and
Robert Monroe's Insights and History
00:00:42
Speaker
listen. Absolutely. I am Robert Monroe, and yes, I am coming on here to talk about Cast and Steel. Cast and Steel was started by the Steel Founders Society of America, and it's a college student competition where we task college students to create projects.
00:01:01
Speaker
something awesome out of steel ah using metal casting and modern techniques. My particular role is basically marketing lead. I've been doing that since 2023, but I do have a personal connection. My father, Raymond Monroe, ah is actually the creator of Cast and Steel, and that started around 2019.
00:01:24
Speaker
Ah, got it. I did see the name connection. I didn't put that together, but that's that's cool. So you've you've seen this group ah start from a long time ago and how it's evolved, I guess.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, ah it's actually pretty exciting. i i was not personally there at the 2019 competition, but it just started off as a random idea from my father. he thought that we were really not pursuing the workforce development. He doesn't even like that term workforce development because it feels so clinical. It doesn't feel personal. It doesn't ah you know, if you think about it instead of from a top down, but from a bottom up perspective, if we really want to get the next generation excited about manufacturing, we need to put it in terms that are going to be exciting to them and not just be this is something you should do because it's important to the country and to these industries, but instead ah frame it as something fun, as a challenge. And so he started 2019 going, hey,
00:02:27
Speaker
ah ah these ah foundry clubs around the country, would you like to make a Viking axe as a possibility of a senior design project?
00:02:37
Speaker
ah no ah ah No restrictions. Just make it however you want. It just needs to be cast. And so he threw out that call in 2019 and they ended up getting ah over 20 teams from 16 universities the first year.
00:02:56
Speaker
And he also had a really interesting idea of bringing in Ben Abbott from Forged in Fire. as a forging guy. But the cool thing is, you know, if you can make a forging guy happy with a metal casting, then you must be doing something right. sir Yeah. Okay. i if I'm going to break in here, I have many questions. course. to do just quick background because there's a lot of like engineers like myself even who don't work a whole ton in forged steel or metals and cast metals. i I've worked in it a little bit tangentially for manufacturing, but there's also a lot of teachers who listen. Do like a one minute summary of like what cast metal is or cast steel is versus, you know, other manufacturing processes.
Metal Casting Processes and Techniques
00:03:42
Speaker
great No, ah greatly appreciate the question. Yeah, so ah when you are talking about metal casting versus other methods, so first of all, as my dad loves to say, all metal is cast. And what that means is at some point, we turned it into a liquid to pour it into a shape.
00:04:00
Speaker
And then we may take that shape, you know, maybe it's ah a bar and then we weld it to something, which is more a fabricating technique, or we pound it. So we take a big hammer and some of these power hammers that they have these days are insane, the scale and the size and the power. But then you just pound it into the shape that's called forging.
00:04:22
Speaker
And then ah our favorite technology is metal casting. And that is where you pick a mold. And so you effectively make, a negative or and a cavity, an empty space that is the shape of the thing you want it ultimately to be.
00:04:38
Speaker
And then you pour metal into that empty space. And there's a lot of fun different ways of doing it. Probably one of my ah favorites, just because of how unique it is is, lost foam, where you literally carve what you want out of metal, out of foam,
00:04:54
Speaker
And then you pack sand all around it, have a little hole at the top to pour the metal in. You heat up your steel in a furnace until it gets liquid. And then you pour it through that hole and the foam evaporates and only leaves behind that empty space that's exactly the shape you wanted it to be.
00:05:15
Speaker
That's super cool. And you're making me remember that there are tons of videos on Instagram and YouTube that I've seen of this. It's very viral or or trending right now. And also you mentioned mentioned Forged in Fire. Some people might not be familiar. That's like a reality show ah like based on a similar concept, right?
00:05:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So, forge and fire, um they're they're challenging bladesmiths to make something through forging. And again, probably the easiest way to understand that is the blacksmithing angle where, you know, most of us have been to a Renaissance fair and you see a guy and he's got a big fire that he's typically using bellows to get even hotter than a campfire. And that can get hot enough that you can actually get the steel the um because One of the reasons why we didn't use steel for forever is it's really hard to get hot enough to actually do anything with. ah But with bellows and other techniques, you can get hot enough, red hot, that you can actually pound it into the shape you want. And so that's the forged in fire ah idea. And it's a fun show because it it you know really popularized metal work, I would say, in the last ah few years.
00:06:25
Speaker
And ah so I'm glad you've given us the the speed speed run of like what this whole concept is and kind of what the show is. You're getting college students involved in all of this, not just leaving it to the the folks in media, in popular media.
Professional and Student Involvement
00:06:38
Speaker
But I do want to hear more about The Who. You talked about how your father and other folks at the Steel Founders Society of America are involved in this show. Can you tell me a little bit about... um Yeah, just a little bit more about not just your father, but you mentioned there's a lot of professionals involved in the SFSA and this new cast and steel program. There's engineers, there's technicians. like Tell me about who who's interested in metal ah metal casting. Yeah.
00:07:08
Speaker
Yeah, no, thanks thanks for asking. Yeah, the the scope of who's involved is ah quite ah quite incredible in terms of the level of different types of people. So I would say starting from an organizational level, you have um pretty much everybody from Steel Founders Society comes out and and helps. We have administrative people to make sure the trains run on time and all the students get food. Anybody who's involved with college students knows that's extremely important to make sure they're fed.
00:07:39
Speaker
and then ah And then we have all the way through technical judges who are ah leading experts in their field. We have people who have been working with metal casting for 40 plus years who are judging the technical papers that these students have to submit. We have marketing people look at the videos to make sure that the the videos are done well. And then we also have a lot of ah ah people, ah and that's more on the administrative side. Then we have experts that we bring in from outside. So we have um
00:08:16
Speaker
Patrick Nowak, who's an awesome guy from the forging industry, who works at Scott Forge. He's been a judge for quite a while. ah We have um David Baker as well. I think I mentioned Ben Abbott as well. They're from Forged and Fire. They've been bladesmiths and prop makers. for forever. we have ah We're super grateful to have ah governmental support from the DOW. Matt Draper has been an awesome ah support there and IBAS and that whole crew and then multiple other trade associations. But then i think from an educational side, the really exciting thing is there's many, many ah
00:08:54
Speaker
professors ah from schools all over Ohio State University, Pitt State, Michigan Tech, all over the country. This ah past competition this year, not the one that is in the TV series coming out on the 9th, but from this year, ah we had 58 teams. ah you know ah Some multiple ah multiples from universities, so not quite 58 universities, but from all over, all the way from France ah competing. And then each of those have their own industry partner. And so you're talking from small investment casting, that's similar to that lost foam process where you're making typically ah maybe a smaller batch of parts and you're you're working at a smaller scale all the way to just... humongous ah you know metal casting ah facilities will open their doors to help these students with ah understanding the technology and also actually pouring the ah the thing that they're asked to make.
00:10:02
Speaker
That's exciting because you're marketing from the marketing side. I can tell it's working, but there's clearly interest in manufacturing methods and metal.
Changing Perceptions of Manufacturing
00:10:10
Speaker
Why do you think that is? You know, I i've thought about this a lot because ah my main role in the project is on the marketing side. And what I've really ah come to realize is we, ah you know, and I'll just speak from my own experience. I'm a little bit on the older side. I'm i'm in my late 30s. But ah when you look at that, the message that was sent to us and I think was continued to send was don't get involved in manufacturing. Don't go into a dirty industry. The success is getting your college degree. Nothing wrong with going to college. It's the college competition. But get a college degree, go into safe industry, maybe do something with computers, something with tech.
00:10:54
Speaker
And what I think we really missed in that message is first of all, the reality that we're surrounded by physical objects. If you look around your house, there are many metal castings. ah Your door handles are metal castings. Your you know your phone case, ah all of these different things, a lot of them are metal castings. And so we have to keep making these things. And they're very fulfilling industries from a personal meaning standpoint. Don't want to get too philosophical or spiritual here, but... There's something very satisfying from a pure human physical level in creating something you can hold versus making something digital.
00:11:39
Speaker
Right. Nobody is vibe coding this sword that people are making right now. AI is not going to replace. So ah talking about the human, you've raised this really important point, the human connection in this. And when when I was learning about Cast and Steel, this program, which I'm going to repeat what you just said, other people, the public can see last year's competition, right? July 9th on YouTube. Is that right?
00:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I'm bearing the lead here, yes. July 9th at around 8 p.m. Eastern, but then it'll just be up from there, and episodes will come up weekly. We are premiering our first season of Cast and Steel. It's not the first year, it's not like we're going back to 2019, but in 2025, had gotten the funding from to turn it more into a reality TV style production. And I want to emphasize it's a style production. It's not reality TV in the sense that it's not all fake. It's not trash TV. Yeah, exactly. It's real students really doing this competition and the...
00:12:46
Speaker
and And what we're really grateful about is having that degree of visibility and that quality level will allow us to get into, um you know, a lot of spaces that this type of industry typically is not in because just people don't see it. I i had the ah benefit of having ah a lot of family connections to metal casting, so I've been aware of it. But if you talk to a lot of people, they're they're not necessarily aware of this whole world. And what I personally love so much about these episodes
00:13:20
Speaker
is there's a huge focus on the individual stories of the students and how they go from, ah you know, some of them ah didn't even know that metal casting was a thing. They got to college. Someone said, hey, you want to come ah to my club? And they're like, what's your club do? And they're like, well, it's like it's a foundry club. What's that? Well, there's pizza. Okay, I'm in And they show up.
00:13:45
Speaker
And then they are exposed to this whole world and they fall in love with it. i I think one of my favorite quotes from one of the professors in the show is metal casting is the closest thing we have to legalize pyromania.
00:13:58
Speaker
So if you love... fire, if you love excitement, if you love, you know, ah that type of thing, it really beckons to not everybody, but a certain, ah you know, section of the population. And you get to experience that vicariously through the students through the show. So it premieres July 9th and then runs through, um i think, a middle of August because it's six episodes. Got a weekly release kind of thing? Weekly release, and it showcases the student's story to the competition and then showcases each qualifying round. So there were five qualifying rounds. And so their testing um ah that year was ah George Washington's sword. So they made a replica of George Washington's sword. And they tested that. And then um we picked a winner of each of those qualifying rounds. And then those went on to the final, the final episode, the sixth episode, ah then centers around who wins that and ultimately gets a $25,000 prize.
00:15:04
Speaker
That's awesome. And like I'm sure the college students will want that prize. I'm sure there's all these expenses related to college nowadays. Hey, a couple of weeks not on ramen. Sounds pretty exactly Exactly. And you talk about how these students, especially, maybe they haven't heard of it before, but they're really, this this field, this competition, but the field in general is appealing to like people who want to have this human connection because they get to create something. It's still a creative profession, but still highly talented. technical, maybe a little dangerous in some ways. So um just briefly, like what's the kind of technical skill that goes involved in this? What are we going to see when we watch you know this first episode of Cast in Steel? What kind of thinking, what kind of stories do we ah is
Technical Aspects and Safety in Casting
00:15:50
Speaker
someone going to expect? Yeah.
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, i I think that's what's really fascinating about metal casting as an industry is it has it is one of the oldest things humans have made. Humans ah since prehistory basically have been finding a way to heat up metal ah hot enough, especially the softer metals, to then put it into a particular shape.
00:16:14
Speaker
But ah it has become incredibly technically sophisticated. i would say the first thing that if youre if you haven't seen before is ah the modeling aspect of it. And so, you know, I know I was dissing on computers earlier, but computers and if you're interested in ah working with software and programming, it's super important to be able to know ahead of time what the properties are going to be. So you have simulation, which is basically ah you know using a computer to predict what type of flow is going to happen when you're pouring the metal. There's all sorts of ah problems that can ah arise with how you shaped your mold and whether the spaces all actually get filled or whether there's air pockets, which is called porosity.
00:17:04
Speaker
um Then you also have 3D printing. You will see an incredible amount of 3D printing. I know that's all the rage in the hobby space right now, in the maker space. ah And what a lot of times you do with 3D printing is you're either rapidly prototyping something or you're actually using it as part of the mold process. Because I know I mentioned foam earlier, but you can do basically the same type of thing with a 3D printed mold.
00:17:32
Speaker
As well, ah you have, ah you know, um the ah basically then you have ah sometimes levels of automation in terms of controlling the different things, although that's not quite as prevalent typically in steel casting ah as other types of casting like die casting. But then you also have ah as well heat treating, which is where you're heating the part after you made it.
00:17:59
Speaker
And ah you're adjusting the properties, whether it's going to bend versus break. And that's a huge part of this particular year's competition. Because when you have a sword, if it is too ah hard, ah it will crack like a stone when you hit it into something.
00:18:17
Speaker
And if it's too, ah you know, ah malleable and bendable, then instead it will actually bend around it. And not to spoil anything, we have ah very exciting examples of both of those things happening during the filming of the actual competition. Hey, that's great.
00:18:34
Speaker
If you like a little bit of danger, you know, you can, yeah I was there and I have to say there were a few points where I was like, maybe I should sit a little bit further back. Safety glasses. People will learn about safety engineering. We were all wearing safety glasses because, yes, you you got to wear the safety glasses. No, I love what you're saying. It reminds me of one of my former favorite shows, Mythbusters, where they you would always have to look at the testing aspects of engineering as well, where hopefully your engineering was done right and it doesn't explode. Or or maybe
Integration of Arts and Engineering
00:19:05
Speaker
you want to see... the after effects But i I love that I'm hearing not just materials engineering or metals engineering or metallurgy, but mechanical engineering, stuff that's applicable to computer science and civil engineering, chemical engineering. There's so many aspects of design and and just being creative, even art that I hear when you talk about this. Yes.
00:19:26
Speaker
Actually, no, thank thank you for bringing that up. that One of, I think, the real pleasant surprises of this has been, this has been a really fascinating way to connect ah the arts and humanities to the ah engineering campuses, because often you need ah someone with those, ah with with those type of skills, both with design and the history aspect. So a lot of times, so they have to write a paper and they also have to make a video. And so, yes. How does it feel about the paper writing? I'm curious. You know, what's hilarious is, ah We keep shortening how long the paper needs to be and there's a lot of groaning, which I know sounds really crazy, but we are talking about engineers and highly technical people typically in these competitions. So they love to talk about the finer details. Oh, you're right. Editing down is a skill. I have that problem as well. Yes. Yes. ah But yes, no. ah ah
00:20:28
Speaker
So there this is a multi-factor competition and you'll you'll learn that as you watch the episodes. um But it's not just the the flashy part, but again, it's all very important and it does allow an opportunity for, you know, yes, you do need those science and engineering skills to make sure that you're ah sword has the right properties, but also we're trying to make a replica of George Washington's sword. So having somebody from the humanities that can do the history research and know that history and what George Washington was carrying and what materials it might have been it at that time period become very, very important.
00:21:09
Speaker
you know you You remind me that like there's a lot of STEM educators, elementary and high school educators even listening to this show. And I'm sure if they watch Cast and Steel and listen to you talk, they'll be like, hey, this is so cool. It'll get students, a lot of students hooked on these many different branches of design and art and engineering, but they can't actually forge and fire like stuff at their elementary school. So this is a nice you know alternative to show or hook students in without actually having to risk setting their school on fire. But at the same time, like the story aspect of this is great. You're talking about you know this season is George Washington's sword. There's, I'm sure, a lot of history that students have to learn to to replicate this. And then can you talk about some of just a couple past challenges? I know it's not going to be in this YouTube series, but I remember seeing something about they have to replicate a Thor's hammer, and you have to know about the mythology of that. There's African spear. ah like
00:22:06
Speaker
Basically, what are the I'm interested in how yeah um SFSA chooses the challenge of whether it's George Washington's sword or something else that they got to cast Yeah, so ahll I'll speak to that. So ah first of all, on how the challenge is chosen, um it is basically a ah mixture of different people. So ah Ben Abbott from the Forge and Fire side, he's been in it since the beginning. And so typically him – the SFSA crowd, a lot of the technical judges. We have a lot of, ah we are super grateful to have many, many titans in the metal casting industry and also other metal work industries. Pat Nowak from ah the forging side has been a great asset as well. ah And basically they all get together and they talk. And the main things that they're trying to nail, I would say the primary details is First and foremost, is this fun and exciting? Is it just intrinsically exciting? And then the second is, is this a challenge to cast? We don't typically choose things that are easy to cast or or the easiest thing to cast. It's not like, okay, this is the best use case for casting. It's more, is this a creative challenge for casting? And then the ah third aspect is, is this going to be fun to test?
00:23:34
Speaker
Because i think another fun part about the competition is, yes, it is engineering, ah you know, focused. But the tests are kind of this mixture of fun and engineering, meaning like we let the students test their own items.
00:23:52
Speaker
If you've been to a college, you know ah college students come in all ah ah variation of skill with physical capabilities. So it's not a standardized test. And in that ah now the judges are ah nuanced enough to be able to read into that and to be able to figure that out. And so it's not like that um is a detriment. So anyway, getting into the items, which will give you more of an idea of how this actually works out in the wash,
00:24:21
Speaker
2019, we did a Viking axe. Then 2020, we did a Bowie knife. ah I believe, ah i cannot remember whether it was after 2019 or 2020, we had to set a weight limit because we had the most insanely large axes and Bowie knives. Some of these were like full-blown machetes. ah And then 2020... Sorry, are students flying on planes with their machetes to like show you? Is that what's happening? Yeah.
00:24:51
Speaker
and So funnily enough, I actually, this year had to write a, ah ah I had to help forge an email for one of the teams from Mexico, because this year was a horseman's axe, and they were bringing an axe through the border. And so they were like, hey, is this email okay? And because of the language barrier, they like mentioned weapons like six times. I'm like, oh, can you remove weapon from this this is a non-functional historical replica not not a you know so anyway there's some nuance on how you do that but yes these have flown uh actually if you want to know the hack uh just learn this from ben abbott you say it's a sculpture it's a sculpture that's what it is it's a metal sculpture it's very true yeah it' it's true Yeah, so then 2021 was Thor's hammer, ah so more of the fantasy side. Then 2022 was a Celtic leaf sword. ah And then 2023 was an African spear.
00:25:57
Speaker
ah And then 2024, we went more practical route, which was ah the Halligan bar. Yeah. Which, if you're unfamiliar, a halogen bar is the tool that firefighters use ah to ah you know break down doors and pop ah tires out of cars.
00:26:14
Speaker
um Very, very cool item. And then ah we went to George Washington Sword. And then this past competition, which will end up being season two, was ah Horseman's Axe.
00:26:25
Speaker
and And again, i think it's I think what we've realized throughout the years is you want to pick something that if you ask a regular college student, hey, would you like to make X?
00:26:39
Speaker
They're excited about it. ah And that's really, if we know that we've won. if if when you say, hey, you want to make George Washington's sword? They're like, yes. Yes.
00:26:50
Speaker
Yeah, no, that sounds exactly right. i think if I know you've spoken with other educators and they would say the same thing. You got to hook people in before they'll they'll they'll but have their buy-in and and try to start learning. You got to have motivation. And I love that about the show, this concept.
Participation and Community Engagement
00:27:05
Speaker
can you can you Can you rehash how people can watch the show and maybe for university students, how people might learn more about the competition in general?
00:27:17
Speaker
Yeah, I'd love to. So ah first of all, the show is on ah our YouTube channel, which is just Cast and Steal. The website is castandsteal.net. You're going to find a bunch of information there ah in a variety of different ah places.
00:27:33
Speaker
I would say if you are interested in competing at the college level, I would look up, ah you know, castandsteel.net. There's an easy way to get more information there and the upcoming competition details will be posted soon. i also would suggest at every level ah to pop over to castandsteel.net and then you can click. There are links. There's a lot of sister organizations that we're involved with. So there's a competition called Casting Dreams that goes all the way down to the age of eight, ah which is um a lot of scratch molds and foundry in a box, which is you were talking about earlier about metal casting in the classroom at a younger age and a middle school age. you um
00:28:20
Speaker
the The main thing you do is you just use metals that don't ah melt at quite as high a temperature because steel casting is by nature, quite dangerous, whereas casting something like 10, you can do much more safely in the classroom. ah And so ah there's casting dreams. ah There's also ah ACE and METAL, which are ah both, ah again, programs a lot of times run on college campuses, but open to high schoolers. I had the privilege of going over to Ohio State University earlier this year, and they had a metal boot camp.
00:28:54
Speaker
And it was all high schoolers doing metal pouring and then ah some finishing work afterwards, you know, polishing, grinding, all of that. That's fantastic. I'm glad you're reminding me that Steel Founders Society is not just in Ohio and all of these other organizations are local. I'm sure there's places. I know there's places where I'm at in Austin, Texas, where where folks can find these opportunities. So yeah, ah thanks again for the the sharing of all of that information. I know a lot of people will check it out. Is there anything else, Robert, that you want to plug before we we close out this ah episode?
00:29:32
Speaker
Yeah, i I would just plug just this general idea, which is um ah the reason to look into getting into metal casting and manufacturing. I'd love to say is because, you know, we need it for national defense and it makes our country stronger. All of those things are true. But I would say...
00:29:53
Speaker
Get involved because these people love what they do. You will run into a community, the likes of which you have never been a part of, where people are excited about solving problems and helping people on a daily basis. And you are not going to be a stranger for long.
00:30:10
Speaker
They're going to be so excited that someone else decided to get involved in the thing that gets them fired up every day.
00:30:20
Speaker
That was Robert Monroe, representing Cast in Steel and the Steel Founders Society of America.
00:30:28
Speaker
The K-12 Engineering Education Podcast is produced by this indie studio, Pios Labs, which fosters growth in engineering and education. Follow Pios Labs to check out free educational tools and other fun stuff. That's P-I-O-S-L-A-B-S.
00:30:47
Speaker
Thanks for listening. So many years later. Appreciate