An interview with Robert Peter, General Manager
Supreme Steel Products is one of the leading investment casters in Australasia and has been producing precision investment castings since 1984. Servicing customers in Europe, America, Australia, Asia, England, and of course New Zealand, the staff at Supreme are highly experienced in the areas of investment casting, engineering, metallurgy, casting techniques and tool making.

Celsius spoke with the company’s General Manager, Robert Peter about the business, their relationship with Heat Treatments and the benefit of using the right expertise.

What service does Supreme focus on?

“At Supreme we specialise in producing complex and near net shape components using the Investment or Lost Wax Casting process. The process is capable of producing highly complex components, which dramatically reduce the need for expensive machining and further fabrication processes.”

What is Investment Casting?

“ Investment Casting involves a number of steps including; the production of detailed expendable patterns [usually in wax], the building of a refractory mould around the pattern using a ceramic slurry, removal of the pattern through the application of heat, firing of the mould to develop a maximum ceramic bond, casting of molten metal into the mould and the removal of the refractory and finishing of the cast product.”

What are the benefits?

“ Key advantages of the process include the ability to create complex intricate shapes often involving curves or internal passageways. High melting point metals such as carbon steels, stainless steels, tool steels, cobalt and nickel based alloys can be used and the process allows for greater freedom of design as there is no requirement to part the mould for pattern removal. Thin walled configurations can be made and a high degree of surface finish and dimensional accuracy can be obtained. Most importantly there are the cost benefits associated with the reduction of machining, reproducibility and assembly.”

What makes Supreme different?

“ By specialising in Investment Casting we’ve built up a wealth of knowledge and expertise in this area. We are continually pushing the boundaries and developing techniques that will achieve the results our customers want. It’s always a challenge to do something that hasn’t been done before!”

What is your involvement with Heat Treatments?

“ The relationship with Heat Treatments goes back as early as 1975 when Julian Bogalo, one of Surpreme’s business partners, used their services at another company. We currently use Heat Treatments for more complex or technical heat treating processes as we have the capacity to do some of our own heat treatment.”

What do you see as the key benefit of using Heat Treatments?

“ It is our belief that in order to maintain our position as a leading supplier of Investment Casting in Australasia we need to stay focused on our core business and that means aligning ourselves with suppliers who we believe are experts in their fields.”

“ Heat Treatments have the capacity to help us with some of the more technical jobs we get and we see them as ‘experts’ in the field of heat treating. Having an alliance with them has meant we can look at jobs that require their type of expertise. For example we are currently working on a project that will require the use of a cryogenic chamber and having discussed this need with Heat Treatments they made the call to build one. Obviously it will benefit them long term as they will be able to offer this service to other customers; however what is important is our ability to work strategically together in order to benefit both companies and ultimately our customers. “

Heat Treatments would like to take this opportunity of thanking Julian Bogalo, Robert Peter and the team at Supreme for their support.