cast iron and lurkers

This list has quality people - the regular contributors and the lurkers.
The regular contributors have great insights on a wide range of relevant
subjects. The lurkers add their considerable experience when appropriate.
It is silly to judge a list by the number of posts. The quality of the
posts is so good that strings like "cast iron" are a joy to all of us.

We are all busy people. Filling this list with garbage reduces the
membership because we then have to wade through too much stuff that isn't
relevant to our interests, or to which we have nothing useful to add.
Twenty or 30 posts a day from this large list maintains high quality. I
know really good people have had to leave the list because they don't have
time to wade through 40 or more posts on a daily basis.

On to CAST IRON! I have done substantial work in the plants of the makers
of large machine tools. I saw large, expensive castings rusting in the
snow and asked about the reasoning for tieing up the working capital in
castings aging in snowbanks. I was told that they (In agreement with
earlier postings.) had to cycle through long seasonal changes, and that
there wasn't enough temperature changes in the sunbelt.

I suspect there are other historical reasons for machine tool builders
locating in less pleasant climates, but the argument for thick cross
sections needing these long temperature cycles, sometimes lasting more than
a single year, is, in part, that this source of energy is cheap and
effective. There is little invested in a raw casting sitting out in the
weather. During recessions, they just continue to sit outside, consuming
relatively little cost, but they are ready when orders pick up again.