May 2022 Volume 4

FORGING RESEARCH

Internship Insights: A Student’s Experience at St. Croix Forge By Reese Stemper

I can hear a dull rhythm of banging metal as I walk up to the doors of the production floor in an unassuming factory in Forest Lake, MN. As I open the doors I am hit with a wave of heat and flashes of light from the shaping of red-hot metal. I walk over to a line and begin my education in the process of an industry I previously knew nothing about. As I walk through the rest of the production floor, I start to see the innerworkings of the world of metallurgy, and where I will fit into this massive machine of industry. This was my first day working an internship for Mustad at their St. Croix Forge location and I was ready to discover everything that metallurgy and manufacturing could offer. I started this internship in June of 2021, and I went in with very little knowledge of how metallurgy worked. I knew that, on the surface, you superheat metal and shape it into your rough product. The product that the St. Croix Forge produces is horseshoes. It seems simple to someone on the outside looking in. Horseshoes only come in one shape and there can only be minimal changes from shoe to shoe, right? I was wondering what challenges I could help overcome in a process that has been refined constantly since the industrial era. I had never thought about how the material composition of your die sets could affect longevity and conformity during the forging process. Or about how the lubrication and cooling of the dies between strikes can decrease sticking. Or even how any of these changes that only affect milliseconds of time can compound and create massive differences in production. These challenges and questions kept mounting until I realized that regardless of how refined this process becomes, it will always have room for improvement and innovation. Another aspect of industry and business that I became accustomed to during my time at Mustad was communication. Mustad operates in 16 different countries and has 11 different factories throughout the world. During my time with Mustad, I was given the opportunity to reach out to a variety of individuals throughout our sister companies to work on projects and ask questions. One example that sticks with me to this day was a meeting that I was in with a Simulations Engineer in their Colombian location. He was working on improving one of our production lines and looking into how they could be optimized to fit our needs at the time. While that exchange was daily operations for many of my coworkers, for me it was the first door opened to me regarding international business. I

remember thinking back on that and realizing the full scope of the industry I was joining. Overall, this internship was extremely enlightening for me. I learned that no matter how simple a process seems, there is always room for improvement. I learned that every improvement and optimization no matter how small can make a huge difference in overall productivity. And I learned about international communications and how massive the world of metallurgy really is. I hope to take these lessons with me as I continue my education in the world of manufacturing with ESC Induction as I do another internship this summer. This industry has shown me a career path that I had never thought of before, but it has me excited for the future that it brings.

About St. Croix St. Croix Forge is the main producer of steel horseshoes for the North American market within the Mustad group. St. Croix Forge develops products in collaboration with farriers, be it top farriers in America and Europe or the

Veterinarian facilities at world-renowned Universities. The group's vision 'For the better of the horse' is reflected in every step of their product development process. All of St. Croix’s machinery is purpose-built by their own engineering office with patented Mustad technology. They are constantly improving their processes with the latest innovation and technology to produce premium quality forged horseshoes, delivered to the market swiftly and efficiently. Reese Stemper Email: Reese.stemper@ndsu.edu

FIA MAGAZINE | MAY 2022 72