A Casting for a £3m Engine

Sarginsons Industries, an aluminium foundry, asked us to find a machining solution for a challenging casting destined for the engine of a £3m hypercar, an oil pump body where internal geometry, surface finish and dimensional stability all had to be perfect at once.

Aluminium castings move. Residual stress, wall-thickness variation and complex geometry meant a conventional fixture-and-cut approach risked distortion the moment material was removed. And the part fed a flagship engine, a late or out-of-spec component held up a £3m powertrain.

We engineered a bespoke fixturing strategy that clamped the casting without inducing stress, combined with in-cycle probing that measured each part's actual as-cast surface before cutting, so the toolpath adapted to every individual casting rather than assuming a nominal blank.

Programming sequenced operations to balance material removal across the part, releasing stress evenly and holding geometry stable through to the final finishing passes.