Lawton Standard Industrial Engineer Nick Knotts knows a thing or two about mold wash.
He just took home his second straight Founders’ Choice Award at the Steel Founders Society of America’s (SFSA) Technical and Operating conference for his research on mold wash.
“It feels amazing,” said Knotts. “To win twice in a row, first person ever to win it back to back, is just absolutely incredible.”
The SFSA held their T&O conference in Chicago in December.
Knotts, who is based at Lawton Novi in Michigan, continued his research from last year on mold washes, which also won the Founders’ Choice Award. He is trying to figure out the cause of gases and inclusions getting into the finished casting due to the mold wash system.
2025 SFSA T&O Conference Founders’ Choice Award
“Primarily what this research paper dealt with was the effect of different elements in the wash system and how they influenced the propensity of the wash to form gasses and inclusions in our castings,” said Knotts.
He went on to say the primary variable they played with in the research was the density, or the baume, of the wash itself.
Knotts did extensive research, spending some 40 hours on that, while his co-author, Tory Wendlandt from SFSA, spent around 25 hours doing the testing in the lab. But that’s not all that went into this research. “I have at least 120 hours in writing the paper itself,” said Knotts. “In terms of how long I’ve spent thinking about it? Now that I can’t put a number on.”
Knotts said he couldn’t have done it without his co-author, Tory Wendlandt. “The lab testing itself is grueling. It’s not a lot of fun and it takes forever. It was really great having Tory’s input and it was absolutely some great help!”
After all that work, what was the result?
“The major finding was that the carrier is not the driver of the formation of gases and inclusions that come from the mold wash,” stated Knotts. “There is something else in the mold wash system driving this problem.”
He went on to add that another thing they found was that the more wash, mill thickness or buildup of the actual wash made the gas and inclusion problems even worse.
“So I can tell you it’s not the carrier, not the water or the alcohol depending on the wash you use. I can not tell you what in the wash system it is…. yet!”
It wasn’t easy turning his 36-page research paper into a 15 minute presentation at the T&O conference, but Knotts broke it down into two parts to get his point across. He focused on the loss on ignition after drying testing and the results of test pours.
For years, the general consensus of industry experts is that the gases or inclusions came from the leftover carrier that was either not dried properly or stuck around as part of the wash mixture.
Knotts was proud to prove that consensus wrong.
“The paper concludes extremely conclusively that even after all of the carrier is gone, there are still gases and inclusions forming,” said Knotts. While leftover carrier can still cause an issue, the big thing in Knotts’ research is that even when the carrier is completely gone, the wash still causes gas and inclusion formation.
How Knotts’ Research will help Lawton Standard Moving Forward
There are two significant ways this can the Lawton Standard family of companies and other foundries.
“Ideally we reinvent the game on mold wash,” said Knotts. “We either find a way to make mold wash that doesn’t cause gases or inclusions to form or at least causes less of them to form. Or we find a way to get rid of mold wash entirely, that would be the real end goal of this.”
In the interim, this research will help Lawton locations tailor their mold wash practices to help reduce the amount of gases and inclusions that form from the mold wash we’re using today.
“The other thing it helps us do is to have a baseline on how to evaluate perspective mold washes we want to bring into our foundries,” said Knotts.
Future Research on Mold Wash
“There are other things in this wash system causing gases and inclusions to form that are not the carrier,” Knotts said as he discussed future research on mold wash.
He plans to do further research, but it will take a bit of a different form. “I don’t have any further interest in saying wash forms gas and inclusion quality details, because that is conclusively proven at this point.”
What Knotts is interested in going forward is figuring out what in the mold wash system is causing the issues, since it is not the carrier.
The other thing Knotts would be interested in researching is “alternative mold coatings that work better than the mold washes we buy currently. Also alternative molding methods that eliminate the need for mold wash.”
One of those steps is looking at how investment casting companies use their washes successfully.
Knotts said those companies are using a mold wash-like coating that is working, the main difference is they can get it very hot prior to pouring and not destroy their molds.
“So that’s different,” quipped Knotts, “but still the principals are relatively alike and how do we leverage that to make better no-bake mold wash? Can we learn from them?”
Other Award-Winning Papers at this year’s SFSA T&O Conference
There was a three-way tie for this year’s SFSA T&O Conference Founders’ Choice Award.
One of the other authors selected did a paper on their foundry’s “slam pouring” technique.
“It’s basically a method of steel casting production where you pour the casting as fast as humanly possible,” said Knotts. “It was really interesting. They were pouring something like two tons into heated molds in just seven seconds!”
The other winning paper focused on a foundry in the southwest United States who totally gutted and rebuilt their sand lab. “They saw a lot of cost savings and lot of quality improvement from having the updated sand lab,” said Knotts.
Knotts said there were around 70 papers submitted for this year’s award. “A lot of really good ones I beat out.”
Several of the other papers that sparked Knotts’ interest included one on environmental health and safety. It focused on environmental data reporting and how you could do it using industry 4.0 tools for just a few hundred bucks.
Another one that caught Knotts’ eye was a presentation on how a foundry incorporated AI into their facility. “It was much more grounded and down to earth than a lot of papers on AI. It was an actual use case of what they have done, which I thought made it way better.”
The Importance of SFSA and the SFSA T&O Conference
“The T&O Conference is an incredible opportunity to learn, to network and to discuss any and every thing steel foundry industry,” said Knotts.
He went on to say it’s not just a bunch of research papers, a lot of the papers are from foundries talking about things they have done to improve quality, efficiency and much more. And those presentations ranged from environmental to health and safety to human resources.
The SFSA T&O Conference is a great way to meet up with other industry experts and discuss the ins and outs of the industry. “You never know if it’s going to be a similar situation or something completely different,” said Knotts. “We all do things a little differently, but at the same time we do things fairly similar: we all pour steel.”
Along with these great conferences, the Steel Founders Society of America also has a vast array of technical resources and excellent connections for people in the steel industry.
“There is pretty much no problem in the foundry at Lawton Novi that I haven’t been able to go through Steel Founders and ask them about,” said Knotts. “They’ve never really said to me “nobody knows anything about that.” They almost always know something, and they almost always help. If they don’t know anything, they are going to make an effort to find out.”
Nick Knotts is an Industrial Engineer for the Lawton Standard Co. and is based out of Lawton’s Novi facility in Michigan. He is also the chair of the SFSA Future Leaders group.
You can read more about his award-winning research that earned him the 2024 Founders’ Choice Award by clicking here.