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Armor Holdings Company is one of the main suppliers of armored HumVees to the military. Metal castings play an important role in the armoring aspect of the vehicle. The standard HumVee that we might see on the Iraqi streets as well as the base un-armored military model use hundreds of castings, just like most automotive vehicles. However, the additional armoring and prep work of the vehicle for frontline activities uses a lot more critically important castings.

During a recent run up in production, Armor Holdings made a strategic decision to dual source its castings. LT Enterprises, a highly experienced supplier to Armor Holdings, was tasked to get the second source ramped-up and running very quickly. At LT’s request, buyCASTINGS needed to find a qualified and competent investment castings source that could quickly come on-board to produce the tooling and parts. buyCASTINGS located the foundry and within 2 weeks, the tooling and samples were completed and hand delivered; and within a month, production was underway on the 6 parts. An Armor Holdings executive was quoted as saying “I’m pleasantly surprised that we had a dot-com (buyCASTINGS.com) bail us out in a difficult situation.” Presently the increased production of the machine gun turret is back on schedule after receiving castings from the dual-source foundry.

Armor Holdings currently armors and preps 1000 HumVees per month at it suburban Cincinnati location. Armor Holdings Up- Armored High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs) such as the M1114. An important portion of the armoring and prep at Armor Holdings is the machine gun turret assembly. This assembly is a prime example of how metal castings are being used to help save lives and defend our nation. The assembly, pictured here, is a 20 pound device that allows the ease of movement for the HumVee mounted machine gun. With the diversity of soldiers now serving in the military, operations of equipment must be made so that 95% of all soldiers can complete the task; the machine gun turret is an example of this need. The assembly includes 8 steel investment castings and one aluminum permanent mold casting.