Welcome to your Virtual Tour of Mercury's World Class stainless steel propeller plant

Welcome to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, home of Mercury Marine.  As you walk into the investment casting plant, which is located adjacent to Mercury's outboard production facility, the first thing you notice is the heat.  Its hot, hot like a sauna.  After all, this place is a foundry, where cold steel is heated to 3,000 Fahrenheit degrees until it turns into a slippery liquid that instantly adopts the shape of whatever it's poured into.

As we stand there sweating, a worker in his 20's walks by, says hello and smiles.  He doesn't seem too affected by the heat.  "Pretty warm, huh?" he offers as he continues on his way.

The plant is the worlds largest manufacturer of stainless steel propellers.  They turn out 120,000 propellers a year, as many as 550 a day.  It seems that type of production would require a place that's loud and frantically busy.  Instead, its not too loud and certainly not too frantic.  The feeling inside the foundry, in fact, is orderly and almost calm.  There's a sense of purpose as the craftsmen go about their business.  Its friendly here, and the atmosphere is one of professionalism.

Bob Sommerfeldt, production manager will be our guide and host.  Bob has worked for Mercury for 31 years, the last 23 right here at Plant 98 as it is called.  His talk is fresh and his voice shows his excitment about what they do and how they do it.  Things are getting done, and they are getting done with efficiency. 

Bob begins our tour saying "We're on the leading edge of this business."  "We're always challenging ourselves to do more, to remain the best.  I don't think there's a propeller as good as ours anywhere in the world."

The plant runs day and night, with 67 hourly and seven salaried employees joining forces to produce the best product possible.  Upstairs, a half-dozen engineers are on site, always experimenting, always tweaking, always looking for a better way. 

The stainless steel props, superior in performance to aluminum props, are created from start to finish in this building.  The art of "investment casting" is thousands of years old, but changes created here have refined the process and helped Mercury to create a more valuable product.

While ingots of steel are being heated to a usable state, models of the desired propellers are created out of a proprietry wax compound.  The models are infinitely detailed, right down to the smallest logos and numbers.  The wax propellers are dipped repeatedly in a liquefied ceramic "slurry" until a hard shell is created around them.  After 24 hours of drying in a climate-controlled room, the shell-covered wax propellers are placed in an autoclave where the wax is melted away, leaving the hard shells intact.

Next, the shells are preheated to 1800 degrees in the burnout ovens and then filled with molten steel in an age-old process where safety is the top priority.  The steel begins to cool almost instantly, and the shell begins to crack away from the newly created steel propeller.  After cooling, the propellers are blasted until they sport a uniform matte finish.  Machining is the next process, followed by the grinding operation.  The men grind the leading edges and balance the propeller to Engineering specifications to prepare for media finish.

At that point, a progressiv concept called drag finishing is implemented to "finish" the steel propellers.  The props are attached to a carousel-like machine that drags them repeatedly through a vat of "media," which consists of composite "stones" created from resin and silica.  This process removes unwanted edges and imperfections from the props, taking them to the next stage of refinement.

The grinders are true craftsmen, according to Darlene Fyvie, who is in charge of managing Mercury's Steel propeller plant.  Darlene has worked for Mercury for 32 years.  The last seven, she has been in charge of operations at the prop plant.

Running a foundry isn't a job decription many women can put on their resume, but Darlene feels like she fits in perfectly with the entire crew.   "If there's something I want to brag about here, its the people," she said.  "We have a longtime relationship with our employees, and they do a tremendous job.  Darlenes goals mimic those listed on the company's mission statement, which  is to manufacture world-class propellers and to exceed the expectations of the customer.

Mercury says she does an exceptional job of that.  The company constantly monitors the trends and actions of its customers - the boaters-- and reacts to the needs of those customers.  When a new propeller type is needed, it can be designed and produced in a few short months.

A new propeller requires about eight weeks of tooling, then about five days to produce it.  Then there is some testing time before the actual product goes into production.

The huge doors at the front of the building are wide open.  The cool, pleasant Wisconsin air is a welcome relief from a place where they melt steel at 3000 degress to shape into World Class Propellers.